A Painter, a Baker, and a Boy who Never Took Sugar in his Tea
by katiac
Summary: Peeta's months in the Capitol under Dr. Aurelius' care as he struggles to sort real memories from false, come to terms with the horrors inflicted on him and those he loved during the war, and understand the true nature of his connection with Katniss Everdeen. Canon-Compliant.
1. The Bread for the Pig

_Disclaimer: I don't own _The Hunger Games_. Some dialogue and quotations used from the trilogy. Mature themes including sexuality, references to torture and abuse._

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**Chapter One: The Bread for the Pig**

_"__I don't want them to change me in there. Turn me into some kind of monster that I'm not."_

_._

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I no longer flinch at the prick in my arm, its sting small and insignificant as the bite of an ant, only blink at the rush of confusion that inevitably follows.

Seconds pass. Disoriented by the sudden sensation of numbness spreading to the tip of each finger, I swallow and carefully examine my hands. A movement to the left comes seemingly from nowhere and it is with no small measure of uncertainty that I frown, forced to consider the possibility the writhing mass of curtains hanging over my bedside window might be one of the Capitol's latest muttations. Having learned nothing over the course of recent months if not to keep such suspicions to myself, however, I stay quiet.

"Peeta, are you ready to begin?"

The question warps itself around the weightless haze of morphling, twisting and distorting like ripples from a handful of dropped berries spreading out over the surface of a lake.

I blink again, still staring down at the bandage on my hand. The morphling has stolen the last remnants of pain from the tiny arc of newly-healed incisions where her teeth cut through my flesh. It leaves untouched the memory of her mouth closing over my skin, the heat of her breath, and the fury flashing dark and virulent in her eyes as she struggles to break free from my grip.

_Let me go._

All but oblivious to the scratch of a pen on the far side of the room, I clench my fingers into a tight fist, knuckles whitening, forearm just starting to shake when at last pain silently rips through the tender new skin with a familiar vengeance, searing into the back of my hand in a copy of the image that has haunted my every waking moment since the Quarter Quell, the exact shape of Katniss Everdeen's smile.

Relief comes in a rush. I touch the edge of the bandage and wet my lips, wanting to tear the cotton gauze and tape away, to fit my mouth against the last place hers touched just as she crushed her lips to mine in the dark bowels below the Capitol. Across the room, there's the grunt of a cleared throat. My name, again, repeated a little louder. Annoyed, I finally look up.

The two figures at the end of my bed resolve themselves-a trembling young nurse whose pale coloring suggests she'd rather be assigned to scrub out every bedpan in the hospital than be the one who gets to inch closer and jab me with a hypodermic if it looks like I might fly into a rage during our session, and the far less excitable Dr. Aurelius. Middle-aged and of medium height, he has a rather boring, nondescript look for someone from the Capitol. No modifications. Hair graying slightly over his ears and throughout his beard. Only the pretentious accent gives him away.

"This interview aired twelve days before your rescue." He pushes his glasses up his nose and leans forward, gesturing to the television they've wheeled in on a cart where I can see myself sitting frozen on the screen. "What do you remember?"

I grunt, not bothering to answer.

"It wasn't in your file from Thirteen." Unfazed, Dr. Aurelius waits a moment, giving me a chance to frown at the image and acclimate myself to the strangeness of it before continuing. "Anything?"

Wishing he'd just leave me alone, I shrug and cover one hand with the other, a fingertip barely protected from view softly tracing along the outline of Katniss' mouth through the bandage.

"It may still return. I want you to concentrate on what you're seeing on the screen. We'll pause at regular intervals to discuss what comes up for you."

He turns to cue the machine, ignoring my glare. I don't say anything and probably never will, but of all the creepy and humiliating things about my _treatment_, watching myself on a tape I can't really remember making along with a roomful of people who saw it the first time around and who will take copious notes on my every reaction while I watch myself try and slip my tongue in the mouth of a girl who obviously wants to scoot farther away and who keeps sticking spoonfuls of broth in my face as a distraction definitely ranks in the top three.

_At least from the looks of this one, there probably wouldn't be any kissing._

The tape starts. I stare dully at the screen while the music plays, frowning at the sight of myself running fingers along the arm of the chair.

"So . . . Peeta . . . welcome back."

There's a pause and then I turn to smile on screen. "I bet you thought you'd done your last interview with me, Caesar."

"I confess, I did. The night before the Quarter Quell . . . well, who ever thought we'd see you again?"

"It wasn't part of my plan, that's for sure."

At this, I catch the glint from Dr. Aurelius' pen as he quietly records my responses on the clipboard propped on one leg. Frown deepening, I turn back to the television.

Caesar Flickerman leans forward. "I think it was clear to all of us what your plan was. To sacrifice yourself in the arena so that Katniss Everdeen and your child could survive."

"That was it. Clear and simple." I watch myself fiddle with the arm of the chair again. "But other people had plans as well."

The tape pauses and I'm pretty sure I'm the only one in the room still breathing. My assigned nurse for the hour has slowly but surely raised the syringe, clearly intent on dropping me to the cold tile floor like a sack of flour if I make a wrong move, and although Dr. Aurelius is more subtle about it, it's hard to miss that one hand has neatly slipped into the pocket of his white lab coat to retrieve the call button that will bring a team of orderlies rushing in to put me in restraints if need be.

"Peeta?"

The prompt is quiet but there's an unmistakable edge to it. Either I answer this time or he ends the session and we start his game over in the morning with the added bonus of a stiff back, a lost day and a leftover headache from a cocktail of knockout meds. I swallow and stare at the screen, trying to make sense of the jumble of images flashing in my brain, some shiny, some fragmented as broken shards of glass, all of them faded and hazy as the blurriest of feverish dreams. After a moment I lick my lips.

"There wasn't a baby . . ."

It's not quite identifiable as question or statement, either out loud or in my head, which Dr. Aurelius immediately picks up on.

"Real," he confirms, patiently nodding as if we haven't had this exact conversation practically every day for the past week. "You made it up during the interview we watched the other day."

I don't bother asking him why partly because he has this annoying habit of flipping those sorts of questions back to me with an overly academic, _'Well, why do _you _think you did it, Peeta?'_ but mostly because whether it's volunteering to die on her behalf, taking a beating to throw her some bread, or teaming up with a bunch of Careers who plan to stab me in my sleep as soon as my usefulness to them is exhausted all so she has a better chance of escaping, the me I barely remember only ever really did things for one reason anyway.

And it's hard not to hate myself for it.

Dr. Aurelius clears his throat and gestures toward the screen. "What do you think you meant by that?"

"What?" I mumble, distracted. Everything starts feeling all twitchy. A glance over at the curtain-mutts proves a bad idea and I flinch before looking away.

He cues the tape back for me.

_That was it. Clear and simple. But other people had plans as well._

The room falls silent while they wait for me to answer. I just stare at the screen. Part of it's easy to guess-that I'd either figured out or been informed of the rebel plot to use me and Katniss as pawns in their rebellion. But as I watch my face cloud perfectly on cue and observe the methodical brush of my fingers against the arm of the chair, I realize something. That it isn't only that Haymitch betrayed us both, which is hardly surprising, or that I'll never really know whether anything that happened between me and Katniss was real or just for the audience.

I don't trust anything I'm saying either.

The room is practically buzzing by the time I turn away and cover my bandaged hand with the other one. The hum of the television looms ominously as a hive of tracker jackers off in the distance, drips from the bathroom drain cold and empty as water on concrete in an underground room devoid of light. Sharp clacks. The scratch of a pen. Bumps and hisses. Low voices. The squeak of a wheel on a cart. Avox screams I can't be sure were ever really there. I've broken out into a sweat. Hands clenching spastically into fists, they start to shake as I slowly force them to unknot.

Unable to tear my eyes from the place where her teeth have left a burning scar on the back of my hand, I let myself be drawn into the tunnels one more time, reliving the horror of the lizard-mutts for the fleeting memory of feeling the heat of her mouth on mine. Of feeling _her_. Whole. Alive.

"Is she here?" I blurt out, unable to help myself.

Dr. Aurelius doesn't react to my outburst, just like he hasn't for the last week and a half, the fact that this morning we manage to get ten minutes into a session before I ask the question something akin to progress. Instead, he merely checks his watch and makes a note on the clipboard.

"Peeta, what did we talk about before?"

Screwing my eyes shut, I scrub both hands over my face, which doesn't do much to erase the image of Katniss being dragged away, but does make the raw new skin on my forehead start to tingle. Dr. Aurelius clears his throat as a reminder I'm still hovering half a step away from waking up hogtied to the bed, getting told it's tomorrow.

"Peeta?" he prompts again.

"She's in a safe, secured place," I practically snarl, more agitated by the second. He doesn't respond. There's a lengthy pause while I debate how to word the next part, hating that I have to ask him for anything, loathing him for holding back the answers that I need. "Is she . . . is someone with her?" I grudgingly mutter. "Her mother, or Haymitch-?"

I don't say the last part, but it forces itself up from somewhere in a dark corner of my mind anyway, twisting evilly round and round until I can't breathe for the thought of it.

_Or Gale._

The images try to force their way in, but there's no need. My head pounds with the endless reverberation of her panicked screams for him just before we were ripped apart. _Gale_, not Peeta, a memory the Capitol has no need to alter and one that will forever stay frozen with crystal clarity in what remains of my mind.

Dr. Aurelius leans forward.

"You're starting to feel things again, from your old memories, overwritten with the false ones imprinted during the hijacking. It's only natural that would be confusing."

I shake my head, barely listening. It's pathetic, really, and some part of me can't stop hating that, even as I can't stop doing it either. "I have to tell her-"

"Have to tell her what, Peeta?"

My fingers splay and contract with such force I can't focus on much of anything else, violent bouts of trembling coming on when I finally manage to grip the railing at the side of the bed. Out of the corner of my eye, I see the nurse slowly inching closer, syringe in hand.

"Don't," I beg, trapped as a wounded animal, the impulse to hurt, to _kill,_ to keep from being rendered weak and defenseless ever again boiling up, horror and dread just as quickly following in its place from the part of me that wishes I wasn't now capable of this. _"Please."_

Vision almost completely black, I see Dr. Aurelius hold up a hand to stop her.

"Peeta, I want you to keep talking to me as long as you can." His voice echoes as though it's coming from the end of a long corridor. "What you're seeing isn't real. You're safe."

_"Don't let her kill me."_

The voice is so strangled, I barely recognize it as mine.

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There are needles in my arm.

Doctors wearing masks and carrying clipboards hover in the background, saying nothing, ignoring my screams and pleas for it to stop. They start the recording on the television while I fight against the restraints, depress the plunger on syringe after syringe I have no ability to refuse.

I am strapped to a bed in one room, a cold metal chair in the other. The belts feel no different. One injection burns while the other brings only a sickeningly familiar sense of powerlessness, neatly snipping the last threads of control and loosening my feeble grip on sanity.

Tendrils of memory fade like a dream erased by the too-bright light of morning under the pound of tapes my captors force me to watch over and over and over, each insisting their version of events is the truth, both seeming to recognize there is nothing left inside the mind of the boy who had once been Peeta Mellark to confirm or deny which of them is the liar.

The only thing of which I can be certain is that I trust neither of them.

Thirteen is orderly, rigid in its timetables. Lights come on at a certain time, are dimmed for sleep on schedule whether or not I close my eyes. I am monitored every second of every day. For the first weeks the flashbacks come with such frequency and intensity, I am not trusted out of restraints long enough to feed myself. A strange nurse stands at my bedside and spoons me my meals one bite at a time like an overgrown infant while I sit strapped to the bed, half-drugged into compliance and chewing sullenly. When the doctors finally decide I'm stable enough to make a go at a cup of vanilla pudding on my own, it is under armed guard, heavy sedation, and with a flimsy cardboard spoon they must have spent hours debating whether I could somehow fashion into a makeshift weapon.

Across one entire wall of the hospital room there stretches a dark, mirrored pane of glass. Through it I can see nothing, will never know at any given moment by how many onlookers or for what purpose I am being observed. One can only imagine after the pudding, there was a team up all night writing reports.

Two guards shackle me each day for the short walk to the showers, secure one of the cuffs around the hot water pipes running along the length of the wall after I've undressed, and wait in silence while I fumble to clean myself seated on a stool with only the thin bar of soap provided, my one available hand clumsy with near-constant tremors even before the dose of sedative none of my early trips out of the hospital room are taken without.

It is no more or less humiliating than the set of procedures to which I've already grown accustomed, having orderlies stand watch outside an open stall whenever I need to relieve my bladder or bowels, having any semblance of privacy stripped away so that I might be constantly observed through the glass, and lying strapped to a bed while a team of curious onlookers absorb with voyeuristic rapture my every scream and curse and cry, forcing me to watch over and over again while my heart is skewered in front of all of Panem by someone I naively loved.

And every time I think of Katniss and Haymitch and what they did, I can't help but hate them a little more.

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There's a sickening moment as you emerge from a flashback where you come back to yourself just enough to realize it's happened again, but you have no idea what you've done. Trashed an entire room. Hurled a nasty string of expletives you'd ordinarily turn beet red just from thinking about. Ranted on insanely for hours about images no one else can see. Screamed until you had to be knocked out.

Killed someone.

You can't be sure of much. All you know is you hate yourself a little more, if that's even possible.

The light in my room has been dimmed. Dr. Aurelius is standing over me, checking my eyes with the penlight he keeps in his coat pocket. My head throbs from the inside out like someone has taken an eggbeater to my brains, far worse than anything I can remember my mother doling out with her rolling pin. Every sound in the room makes me wince.

I reluctantly accept the cup of water he hands me. "How long was I . . . ?"

"Twenty minutes, this time." He motions the nurse over to the other side of the bed and I warily extend one wrist and allow her to take my pulse. "How do you feel?"

"Awful," I mumble. My arms and legs are heavy as lead and even though I can't really remember it much, I feel about as lethargic as I looked right before Katniss' sleep syrup and mashed berries concoction knocked me out cold for an entire day.

Dr. Aurelius nods. "Unfortunately, I can't give you any more morphling just yet. Can you describe what you saw?"

Making a face, I debate ignoring him, but finally start going through it in a slow, tired voice while he takes notes even though there's really nothing new. The lizard mutts. Katniss laughing as I'm taken from the second arena. Being so terrified when they strap me to the chair and start the tapes of her that I piss myself from fear. I'm too ashamed to mention the image of her running straight into Gale's arms while I lie cold and alone, bleeding on the floor of my cell, but after a few seconds, I squirm a little and reluctantly describe the overpowering urge I felt to strangle her.

_Again._

After jotting down another note or two, Dr. Aurelius reaches into his pocket for the remote device and moves to flick the television off. I frown and push up on the pillows.

"Can't I see the rest of it?"

He studies me for a moment, clearly considering my mental state. It's hard to say why I want to see it. I almost never feel better afterwards and most of our sessions end like this one, or worse. But then, it's impossible not to hate the idea of them having another piece of me right there that they control and to which I have no access.

Balling one hand into a fist when he hesitates, I grunt.

"Haven't you already taken everything out of the room I could use to kill myself if I see something I don't like?"

It's half supposed to be a joke, but nobody laughs. After a moment, Dr. Aurelius gives me a long look and flicks the button.

"That last night . . . to tell you about that last night." I nod slowly on screen. "Well, first of all, you have to imagine how it felt in the arena. It was like being an insect trapped under a bowl filled with steaming air. And all around you, jungle . . . green and alive and ticking. That giant clock ticking away your life. Every hour promising some new horror."

I watch myself shrug.

"You have to imagine that in the past two days, sixteen people have died-some of them defending you. At the rate things are going, the last eight will be dead by morning. Save one. The victor. And your plan is that it won't be you."

The recording pauses.

"Peeta?"

I glance over only once it becomes clear he's going to make us sit there until I do.

Dr. Aurelius pushes his glasses up. "Anything?"

"Nope." Shrugging, I pick at a thread on the edge of the blanket.

He waits and gently prods in an annoying voice I can picture him spending hours practicing in the bathroom mirror. "You can take a minute, if you need-"

Irritated, I rub my eyes and cut him off. "Can we just keep watching?"

It comes out too sharply and some part of me instantly regrets it. But not enough to take it back. No one says anything else and Dr. Aurelius starts the tape again.

"Once you're in the arena, the rest of the world becomes very distant. All the people and things you loved or cared about almost cease to exist. The pink sky and the monsters in the jungle and he tributes who want your blood become your final reality, the only one that ever mattered. As bad as it makes you feel, you're going to have to do some killing, because in the arena, you only get one wish. And it's very costly."

The hair on the back of my neck is standing on end even before Caesar leans over to solemnly interject that, _'It costs your life,'_ and for the first time since we started watching, I'm actually starting to believe my own words. And then I see myself frown on screen as if Caesar has missed the easiest question in the book.

"Oh, no. It costs a lot more than your life. To murder innocent people? It costs everything you are."

The room goes very still, the words seeming to hang in the air for an eternity. Casual. Unassuming. Light enough to slip in unnoticed like a finely sharpened knife and deliver the deadliest of blows. Even the audience sits stunned.

I squint my eyes shut, mumbling, "Turn it off."

The silence that follows is even worse, the quick, tight scratch of Dr. Aurelius' pen across the room increasing in agitation as if it's of utmost importance to make sure to record every miserable word. After a moment it stops.

He clears his throat. "What's coming up for you right now?"

I stare down at my hands. "Nothing much."

"You seem upset," he says gently.

At this, I slump back on the bed and stare out the window. There's another long silence, one where my jaw clenches tighter and tighter until I can barely keep from yelling at him to get the fuck out of my room and leave me alone.

"Nope."

Out of the corner of one eye, I see Dr. Aurelius shift in his chair, fold his arms and cross his ankles as if preparing to settle down for a nap. _Unbelievable_. I grunt under my breath. A minute passes and then two. Finally I rake a hand through my hair.

"Are we just gonna sit here all day?"

He straightens, voice calm. "How does it make you feel, Peeta?"

Studying the mountain ranges off in the distance, I blow out a breath. "Uh . . . I dunno . . . sad, I guess?"

For a second I'm sure he can tell I'm barely trying, but then he just starts writing again and as I stare at my face on the screen it's hard to bring myself to care.

"Can you elaborate on that?"

I let my head flop against the pillows, blinking a few times because the morphling is still making my head swim like crazy and I can barely keep my thoughts straight.

"It's like it happened to someone else."

The tape's paused and I'm staring at the ceiling but I know Dr. Aurelius looks up.

"Tell me."

I pick at the bandage on my hand. "This one I don't really remember. But even in the ones where I do," my finger traces over the outline of her teeth, "I don't remember _feeling_ anything at all. I can see it on the screen just like you, guess what I think you want me to say, but . . ."

There's a longer silence, one where I'm pretty sure Dr. Aurelius is pinching the bridge of his nose, so I'm not expecting the question when it comes.

"And the memories that have returned spontaneously, are they the same?"

Frowning, I look at him, surprised to see his brow furrowed with what looks to be concentration or concern.

"Uh, yeah, I-"

"Think carefully, Peeta. Take a moment if you need to. Can you think of any memory from before the hijacking that's resurfaced with emotion attached?"

I'm not moving by this point, barely even breathing. Dr. Aurelius waits a minute.

"Any memory at all."

"The-"

Stopping short, I screw my face up and scrub a hand through my hair.

"Go ahead, Peeta," he encourages.

"One . . . one of the last things I remember before everything starts getting shiny is when Darius and Lavinia were killed . . ."

For maybe the first time since we started our daily sessions, I gain a grudging measure of respect for Dr. Aurelius. Because even when the nurse blanches at my description of Lavinia being stripped naked by the guards, used again and again in front of us, and accidentally killed during the first hour when the electrodes they placed between her legs allowed too much voltage to stop her heart, he doesn't react. Nor does he blink upon hearing about severed fingers and toes being forced down Darius' throat, the beatings that went on so long I began to lose track of the days, or the final grisly moments where they cut out his eyeballs. Just nods every once in a while and writes it all down.

"-it was how I recognized _who_ the mutts had found in the tunnels under the Capitol. Avoxes make a very specific sound when they-"

"I am aware." Eventually he gets to a stopping point and looks up. "How did you feel when it happened?"

"Scared," I answer automatically.

He nods. "Anything else?"

I think about it. "Glad for Lavinia. That it was over so fast. She could've ended up like Darius."

While he finishes writing I glance over to where my assigned nurse is fidgeting uncomfortably in place and frown. Dr. Aurelius clears his throat.

"Peeta, I want to read something back to you." He flips the page and adjusts his glasses.

_"-and I can still hear Katniss laughing while they strap my arms down. I'm screaming for them to stop, begging and pleading, but they just pick up the first needle and give me the injection anyway. Everything goes completely black except for the television screen where Katniss is sawing down the branch with the tracker jacker nest to try to kill me. I'm so scared when I see the murderous look in her eyes I go stiff as a board, but I can't get away because of the restraints. I'm shaking so hard my stomach hurts. And then the branch falls and there's nothing I can do."_

At first I'm just relieved he stopped right before the part where I wet myself, and for a second I just sit there while he waits. But then it hits me.

"I didn't feel anything there either, did I?"

His voice is gentle. "What about your memories with Katniss?"

Without meaning to, I jerk at the sound of her name. He always says it wrong. Not as markedly as most of the others from the Capitol, but there's still the odd hiss at the end that shouldn't be there any more than a sewer full of lizard mutts created with no purpose but to hunt her down.

This time I don't even try to hide the path of my finger as I trace the outline of her teeth.

_Katniss._

It comes in a jumbled rush. Fear. Hurt. The smoky earthiness of her hair. Anger as we see each other across a crowded cafeteria table in District Thirteen. Flickers of hope. Confusion. The disdain dripping thick in her voice as she proclaims me to be just another of the Capitol's mutts. Rage. Betrayal that runs so deep I may never find its originating point. The unfamiliar sensation of having someone else's spit on my tongue. The taste of her mouth mingled with lamb stew and another more subtle flavor I couldn't name, a leaf she liked to pluck wild from bushes in the forest and chew as she walked.

Nothing that provides any hope of clarity.

"They're all the same," I finally say. "Like staring at a series of pictures and being told to describe what they are, and you can, but-"

Dr. Aurelius studies my face for a moment. "But _what_, Peeta?"

I swallow, noticing maybe for the first time how _small_ her bite feels in comparison to my hand. How small _she_ truly is.

_And not particularly pretty._

Squinting to clear my head, I continue in a halting voice. "But . . . without really knowing what made you want to paint them in the first place." There's a long pause while he writes it down, and just when he starts to speak, I blurt, "She's everywhere in my head."

"In what way-"

"-but none of it makes any _sense_." Heart thumping so hard my chest aches, I rake both hands through my hair. "One minute, I think I want to kill her. I_ hate_ her, I'm so angry. And the next, I want to-"

Heat crawls up my neck and I don't finish.

"Want to what, Peeta?"

I just glower at him and he lets it drop. After he gets done writing, he glances at his watch and leans forward.

"Take your time with this, Peeta." He rises from the chair and motions the nurse to push the cart with the television towards the door. "You made excellent progress today and I'm going to give you a bit of homework for our next sessions. I have a theory, but I want to see what comes up for you over the next few days first."

"What sort of homework?"

He crosses his arms with the clipboard tucked to his chest, nodding thoughtfully. "I want you to start keeping track of precisely _what_ you remember _in the moment_ you remember it. What triggers it? What do you smell and taste and see? What feelings does the memory invoke in the present even if they don't seem to match your actions in the past?"

I scoff under my breath. "How am I supposed to write all that down without any-"

"I'll send up an audio recorder." Ignoring my grunt, he makes another note. "How did you sleep last night?"

We go through the same routine every time. He knows I never get more than a few hours in and haven't since they brought me out of a four-week induced coma down in the burn unit. And still he always asks in the hopes I'll eventually give in and reconsider my stance on the long list of medications he wants to prescribe.

"Just great," I say dryly. "Out like a light as soon as my head hit the pillow."

At this I get a frown, and there's a part of me that can't help but silently gloat even while the other voice in my head chides me for the reaction, a silent panic rising in both the moment he turns for the door.

"Dr. Aurelius?"

He pauses with his keycard raised.

"Where is Katniss?"

For half a second, something like pity flashes in his eyes, and I can't help but hate him for it. But his voice remains unchanged.

"I'll see you tomorrow, Peeta."

Lip curling into a sneer, I flop back on the pillow without bothering to answer.

.

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Through the process of my rehabilitation in Thirteen, what starts as _fear_ slowly shifts to confusion. Suspicion. Bewilderment. And finally, anger. But at first there is room for none of these things.

Strapped to an unfamiliar hospital bed, I scream until they knock me unconscious, awaken groggy and unable to remember why my throat is raw. It is quickly discovered I fly into a rage at the mere mention of _her_ name, whenever they try to suggest she is anything less than what I know her to be.

_A muttation sent to kill me. A whore that used me in front of the cameras and then slept with Gale Hawthorne. A monster. A murderer. A liar._

When memories slowly begin to return in the cold, empty isolation of the hospital ward, it is disorienting, terrifying to a degree that surpasses words. They come in flickers at first, fragmented images without words, shredded bits of _something_ I can't hope to find a place for. A half-second snippet of a song whose title I'll never recall. A scrap torn from a list of ingredients that will bake into something unknown.

For the blink of an eye as I sit chained to the wall of the washroom with hot water streaming down my back, I remember the coarse grittiness of sand under my thighs. Hot. Grainy. Dusty. I reach down in confusion to feel my skin, and then it's gone.

Haymitch comes by most days and stays until I scream at him to get out. Five minutes here, ten minutes there. The first couple times he stands unmoving at the foot of the bed and lets me hurl every name I can come up with at him, spitting and fighting against the restraints like a crazed animal while he stares sorrowfully, one hand fumbling for a flask that is no longer there.

That much I remember.

Delly Cartwright tries to help me piece it all back together. And a little later, Prim. And as some part of me begins to concede it's _possible_ Katniss Everdeen is simply a selfish, manipulative girl and not a creation of the Capitol, I come to realize that I wholly dislike the person.

I watch myself on tape, take in the sunny, cheerful boy I can't remember being, watch him sacrifice _everything_ to save her. His future. His leg. His life. I see the insincerity in her eyes when she leans in to him in the cave, the way the tenderness evaporates from her expression the moment she tricks him into swallowing a few mouthfuls of drugged berries, the one point the doctors keep insisting is a lie, that she was a whore who used me to survive the Games and then ran straight to Gale less convincing when I demand its explanation of Haymitch.

I trust the clips they show me no more than I trust the Capitol's, believe the answers they give me about Katniss barely as half-truths, will have no peace until I know for sure.

And so on the morning I begin work on Finnick and Annie's wedding cake, I ask to see her.

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.

I lie restlessly until just after two in the morning according to the wall panel behind my bed. It also controls the lights in the room, and will respond to voice commands even when I am without the use of my hands, a feature upon which learning about I laughed right in Dr. Aurelius' face.

As has become habit over the course of eleven miserable nights, I pace from one end of the room to the other. In a space devoid of stimuli-my restrictions having removed any object that could possibly be turned into a tool of self-injury-the coolness of the tile floor under my one remaining foot is one of the last available forms of reassurance.

_Real_. Not real. _Real_. Not real.

I stop at the window, stare out at the city lights and wonder if somewhere across the Capitol, Katniss can't sleep for the nightmares either, and is doing the same.

_You're still trying to protect me. Real or not real?_

Fingers tickle the skin of my forehead like the forgotten whisper of a wetted brush across canvas, cautiously stroking through my hair as if she fears questioning why she wants to do it herself. Every muscle contracts at the intrusion of her touch, the temptation to pull away, stifling, something far deeper buried forcing me to suppress the urge to moan at the curl of each petal-soft fingertip through the ends of my hair.

I lie unmoving like a dog at her feet, failing to protest the contact enough times that we both understand it is allowed, by some twisted psychological reasoning neither of us has the means to sort out, even _wanted_.

And so she continues to stroke me, petting my forehead like the most pathetic of wounded animals. When a rough shake from Pollux jars me from the first real sleep I've claimed in days, the realization it's come at her hand is all but incomprehensible.

_Because that's what you and I do. Protect each other._

Swallowing, I spread my fingers and peer cautiously at the back of my hand, feeling the slice of silver daggers as she glares up at me, eyes cold and unforgiving, the last moment we are perhaps ever to have twisted by rage.

_Let me go_.

"I can't," I whisper hoarsely. The curtains fall closed and darkness washes over the room.

It is after I climb into bed and lie staring at the ceiling that her face begins to blur, the image prying itself from the desperate clutches of memory neatly as she extracted her fingers from my hand after the first Games, and with it, any presence in my day to day life. As much a figment of my imagination as any source of reassurance in my consciousness, she inhabits my dreams, and is a fixture in every nightmare, _Katniss Everdeen_, who fills all the spaces in my head, even those I can't access myself.

I roll to one side and cup a hand over my mouth, allowing warmth to pool with each breath, drawing back the dark, swirling heat from the seconds when her lips had fused with mine for the last time, the kiss I can barely remember, the one I _want_ to remember.

_Stay with me_.

"Always," I promise to the imprint of her teeth.

My lips brush across the back of the bandage before I can stop them, hot tears of self-loathing leaking from the corners of my eyes as my chest begins to shake.

There is no misconstruing the look of disbelief she gives me in return. Expression hard, it is laced not so much with pity as open disgust, and I curl tighter into a ball and tuck my injured hand beneath the thin hospital blanket, harboring not the faintest sliver of doubt that wherever she may be tonight, Katniss Everdeen is not crying for me.

.

.

I know something is wrong when all the lights come back on at a quarter past eleven. Haymitch slows just inside the door and holds up both hands, each of us silently appraising the other as he's followed into the room by two guards and a nurse wearing gloves and carrying an IV kit. I frown.

"What's going on?"

There's a long pause, one where Haymitch's accomplices work their way into position flanking my bed while he and I stare only at each other. Finally he nods.

"Says she'll see you."

There's no need to ask who _she_ is, his reluctance to speak her name until he's heard me demonstrate I can safely do so myself in that moment without the sound of it causing me to fly into a rage a mistake he won't make twice.

But tonight I simply hold out my arm to the nurse without protest, allowing her to hook up an IV and sedative that can be triggered and dispensed by remote if necessary. I avoid looking at any of them while she puts on the wrist cuffs and fastens two extra restraints to each arm, a measure that has been unnecessary for well over three weeks and one that can't help but feel like a punishment now. That _I_ am the one with everything to fear and will be forced to confront Katniss stripped of any possible form of defense and strapped helplessly to the bed much as I was in every last torture session arranged courtesy of the Capitol no more grossly unfair than anything else I've been forced to endure, I swallow my anger and simply wait.

And at just past midnight, the door slowly opens.

For close to half an hour, I have done nothing but try to visualize her coming into the room over and over again, intent on controlling my reactions when the moment arrives. But as her eyes lock on mine, the jolt to my chest is instantaneous.

She is thin and clearly unwell, olive skin blanched to a sickly grayish pallor that seems to match Thirteen's standard issue clothing, the wisps of hair that escape her loose braid limp and stringy. When she gets a few feet from the bed, she stops. Visibly unsure of herself, she wraps both arms around her middle and bites her bottom lip, coming no closer.

"Hey."

It's something in the way she worries her teeth along the edge of her mouth, I decide later, that proves distracting. She shifts from one foot to the other while I look her over, clearly waiting for an answer.

I frown. "Hey."

She flinches at my tone and I have to bite back the urge to smile. Finally she squirms a little and shrugs.

"Haymitch said you wanted to talk to me."

"Look at you, for starters," I reply before she can catch her breath, and am rewarded by another nervous little jump.

Her eyes stay locked with mine for a few seconds before she begins to wilt under the weight of my stare, but it isn't until she begins casting furtive glances towards the one-way glass that I catch sight of the earpiece nearly concealed by her hair. Fury rises as I understand in an instant, hating Haymitch as much as her for once again choosing their preferred sides.

Keeping my voice flat, I look her over in an appraising way. "You're not very big, are you? Or particularly pretty?"

Anger flashes in her eyes and the edge of her lip curls. "Well, you've looked better."

I laugh then, because _this_ Katniss Everdeen, I recognize. This one rings true. And despite everything about her that is so instantly off-putting, there is an honesty in the acerbic bite of her bluntness that brings with it an almost crushing sense of relief. There are none of the cheerfully sanitized tales of our shared childhood Delly recounts at the doctor's instructions, no half-fibs cleansed of any important detail from Haymitch, the sting of the truth refreshing as a first breath after being smothered for weeks.

She scowls at me and I stop laughing long enough to answer.

"And not even remotely nice. To say that to me after all I've been through."

At this she turns to study the toes of her boots with a sudden intensity that betrays the casualness of her words and I know I've struck a nerve.

"Yeah. We've all been through a lot. And you're the one who was known for being nice. Not me." She fidgets in place for a minute and starts edging towards the door. "Look, I don't feel so well. Maybe I'll drop by tomorrow-"

I let her get within a foot of it and lay my final card on the table.

"Katniss . . . I remember about the bread."

Her shoulders give a subtle jerk, fingers trembling a little as she slowly turns back to face me.

"They showed you the tape of me talking about it," she says warily, brow furrowed.

Our eyes meet. I frown.

"No. Is there a tape of you talking about it? Why didn't the Capitol use it against me?"

She swallows and creeps back over towards my bed. "I made it the day you were rescued." Her arms cross protectively in front of her and I watch her try to hide a wince. "So what do you remember?"

"You. In the rain." My eyes never leave hers. "Digging in our trash bins. Burning the bread. My mother hitting me. Taking the bread out for the pig but then giving it to you instead."

She's nodding before I can even finish. "That's it. That's what happened." She comes closer again, arms unfolding, fingers briefly dangling over the foot of my bed like she'd considered fiddling with the far corner of the sheet out of nervousness and barely caught herself in time. Her voice softens, eyes so wide they've turned a pale, glassy gray. "The next day, after school, I wanted to thank you. But I didn't know how."

I stare at her in disbelief, realization slowly dawning that she wanted that boy _back_. The one she used in the tapes, who gave her the world and asked nothing in return, that where I had come seeking to understand why I would have sacrificed everything for a girl who seemed so small, so insignificant, so heartless, and so cruel to use me over and over again only to leave me just when I needed her most, once again she had come only to take what she needed.

_And it was hard not to hate her for it_.

Instead, I simply continue retelling the story that clearly meant something special to her, and was nothing but a series of meaningless images to me. "We were outside at the end of the day. I tried to catch your eye. You looked away. And then . . . for some reason, I think you picked a dandelion."

She waits a moment and then nods, eyes never leaving mine. I take a breath.

"I must have loved you a lot."

My voice is soft and she almost chokes on her answer, but coughs instead, quickly clearing her throat.

"You did."

I press on before she can regain her bearings. "And did you love me?"

Her eyes shoot down to the tile floor so fast the answer is painfully obvious, but she still squirms in her boots for a minute and tries to lie her way out of it.

"Everyone says I did," she hedges, voice small. "Everyone says that's why Snow had you tortured. To break me."

"That's not an answer." I wait a beat while color floods her cheeks. "I don't know what to think when they show me some of the tapes. In that first arena, it looked like you tried to kill me with those tracker jackers."

A solid month of conditioning, and I still can't keep from flinching slightly at the word. Her scowl returns.

"I was trying to kill all of you," she snaps, contempt dripping from every word. "You had me treed."

I nod slightly and move on. "Later, there's a lot of kissing. Didn't seem very genuine on your part." Waiting a minute for this to sink in, I watch a red flush spread down her neck. "Did you like kissing me?"

"Sometimes." The answer is strangled and soft, so much so that I can't help but wonder if it's the truth. She fusses with the end of her braid. "You know people are watching us now?"

"I know." For half a second, I allow myself a note of dark satisfaction, glad this humiliates her as much as she has me. "What about Gale?"

She lifts her chin, eyes flashing angrily.

"He's not a bad kisser either."

The words come as a punch in the gut, but I don't react, staring into the cold gray of her eyes as I ask, "And it was okay with both of us? You kissing the other?"

"No," she retorts. "It wasn't okay with either of you. But I wasn't asking your permission."

At this, I can't help but laugh and again, she scowls, face burning as she hazards another glance towards the one-way mirror where Haymitch is no doubt whispering in her earpiece that he'll get her out of this jam, our mentor, manipulating the pieces and choosing sides, just like always. I finally stop laughing and shake my head.

"Well, you're a piece of work, aren't you?"

The fraction of a second she stares is long enough to see her eyes grow glassy with the first hint of tears. To know that I've won. I watch her rush from the room, make no move to call after her like the old Peeta would've undoubtedly done.

And when Haymitch comes to my room the following day, I make no mention of the visit, nor do I ask to see her again.

.

.

It happens two nights later.

She hangs back close to the fence at the opposite side of the schoolyard, one thin arm circled protectively around her younger sister's shoulders. Their chins are lifted towards a warm spring sky filled with white fluffy clouds, but it is the look in her eyes as she clings to Prim that causes the breath to hitch in my throat. Where only one day earlier there was desperation and hopelessness now glows a quiet ember of determination, and as I watch her smooth Prim's threadbare collar, the dull throbbing in my cheek seems well worth any price I might've paid to throw her the bread.

I glance away just before she looks up, avoiding the clear, shining gray eyes that can surely see straight through me. But once she turns, I carefully peek back, watch the swing of her hand in Prim's grip and catch the second of hesitation where she seems to spy something nestled in the grass.

And as she kneels to pluck the dandelion from its stem, braid slipping over one shoulder to rest crookedly beneath her ear, there is a strange sense of warmth that blossoms in my chest, the tickle of it passing quickly as I imagine the silky tail of her hair might slip through my fingers had I possessed the courage to reach out and touch it. But it is there. Warm and precious and _alive_.

As quickly as it comes, the sensation begins to fade away, and in the fleeting seconds as I start to slip towards consciousness, I feel a rush of panic.

_No_.

I grasp for it, flailing clumsily, desperate for something, for _anything_ to cling to, wanting to stay if only for a little while longer. Its echo lingers even after I open my eyes to find the dull gray light of early morning in the Capitol and shiver, curling tighter under the covers. I root a hand instinctively down the front of my loose cotton pants, feeling to see if my body has come back to life in response.

Finding nothing, I squeeze my eyes shut and stifle a low moan, longing for the feeling again, to bask in it, soft and comfortable, what the boy on the screen had been so sure of, so sure he would have gladly given up everything for _her_. Not like this. Cold. Miserable. Alone. Head a mishmash of horrors, images each more terrible than the last, to sort true from false painful enough even before accepting the nightmares I would always keep as _real_.

_Real_.

I sit up so fast the cup of water goes tumbling off the tray next to the bed. Ignoring it, I fumble for my prosthetic with one hand and reach for the call button with the other. Three buzzes go blithely unanswered before I hurl it away and angrily yank my leg on.

"Mr. Mellark, is everything-"

_"Paper."_ Blurting it, I rake both hands through my hair. "I need paper." There's a long pause while I pace to the far side of the room, fighting to get my breathing under control. "Is . . . is Dr. Aurelius here?"

The head nurse comes on over the intercom. "Peeta, he'll be here in a few hours. Why don't you lie down, try and get some-"

"No, you don't understand." Voice rising, I ball one hand into a fist. "Something _happened_. I . . . I remembered something. I need to write it down before I forget." I swallow, hesitating. "Ca . . . can't you call and ask him, or-?"

"Not at five in the morning," Hadriana answers calmly, and I frown up at the panel on the wall. "Why don't you use your voice recorder?"

The intercom falls silent. I close my eyes, desperation starting to rise, the warm feeling in my chest fading further away with every passing second. Taking a breath, I lick my lips.

"_You_ couldn't let me have it . . . just this once . . .?"

She doesn't answer, but somehow I know she's shaking her head at the monitor while the other nurses look on, all of them muttering in agreement that I've gone insane. And that's when reality sets in with an angry red haze.

That even if I somehow did manage to talk them into giving me paper, I would never be trusted with something as sharp as a pencil, my food cut in advance before it was delivered to my room so I had no excuse to ask for a knife, what plastic cutlery I was allowed checked and confiscated at the end of every meal, the shower in my private bathroom preprogrammed to include all the standard options in water pressure but only a limited range of temperatures in order to prevent purposeful scalding, the available soaps, shampoos and oils all sufficiently mild and non-toxic.

I close my eyes, struggling to remember the hope and determination blossoming in Katniss' face right before she bent to pick the dandelion, to draw back the exquisite, private _warmth_ that curled around my insides like the hot, yeasty aroma of freshly baked bread knowing she was safe. That _I_ had kept her safe.

"Please." I whisper it just once.

For a long moment there is nothing, and I am foolish enough to allow a flicker of hope. And then the intercom clicks back on.

"Peeta, you know the rules," she says, gentler this time. "Use your voice recorder and Dr. Aurelius will be here-"

The voice recorder is the first thing I smash.

Time dissolves into a manic blur. The bed goes next, the mattress sagging unevenly where it lands against the far wall, rage only boiling higher as my pillow falls harmlessly to the floor. The curtains come down with little effort, the rod designed of flimsy plastic too light to support body weight, intended to break away if too much force is applied. Determined to destroy _something_ in the space they've so artfully designed to keep me prisoner, I'm trying to smash through the thick window glass when the door slides open.

There's three of them and one of me, the odds having never been much in my favor, and it doesn't take them long to get me pinned down. I'm screaming obscenities at the one with his knee jammed into my back when I feel the needle go in, and then my limbs turn to jelly within seconds, vision darkening before I even have time to register fear.

.

Pain stirs me from sleep in increasingly insistent waves, ricocheting dully against the sides of my skull. Groaning, I swallow and try to lift a hand to rub my forehead only to discover they've put me back into restraints, tethering me to the bed at my wrists, ankle and left knee.

There's a moment of sick panic that threatens to turn my stomach inside out and I yank on the cuffs hard, knowing it's no use.

_"Fuck."_

I yell it to the empty room, which has been put back together while I was out. By the light coming in through the window, I can tell it's early afternoon.

The trembling starts somewhere low in my gut and quickly spreads through my chest. I fight the restraints for another minute before giving up. Clenching both hands into fists, I blink to clear the tears and fumble for the call button that someone has moved back within reach of my right hand.

"Peeta?" The voice that comes over the intercom is familiar to me, Decima, one of the more experienced nurses who works on our floor.

There's none of them I can honestly say I _like_, but of all the doctors, orderlies and nurses who come in and out of my room, administering medications, taking vital signs and bringing my meals, she's one of the ones I regard with the least amount of wariness.

The shaking makes it hard to form coherent speech. "Could, um," I choke out a cough when my voice cracks, "could I have some water, please?"

There's no answer. I let my head flop back on the pillow, fresh, hot tears of frustration streaking from the corners of my eyes as I try to stop my heart from racing.

A minute later, the door slides open with a hiss.

Decima angles the straw to my lips without a word, silently removing it once I'm through drinking. She pulls a tissue from her pocket, and when I make no move to protest, blots my face.

"I'll take out your IV now." She pauses, glancing at my hands, which are still shaking in the restraints, arm muscles knotted and tense. "Do you want me to give you something to help you relax?"

_"No,"_ I whisper through gritted teeth and gesture to my wrists. "Can you take these off?"

She stares at me and I can see the answer in her dark brown eyes. Fighting off a fresh wave of anger and helplessness, I bite my lip, saying nothing as tears once again begin to flow.

"Dr. Lucius signed off on the restraint this morning after watching the video feed." She says it softly and with no emotion attached. "Fifteen minutes of calm behavior to remove them. We would need another doctor to come in and reevaluate you to override his orders." Finished removing the IV, she bandages my arm and maneuvers the wheeled stand around the bed. "You're sure you don't want anything?"

I shake my head, chest starting to heave. She's almost to the door when I squint my eyes shut and blurt the question out in a pathetic mumble.

"Did . . . did someone call-"

"He's in with another patient right now." Decima comes over to the bed and dries my cheeks again. "I sent up a message you were awake. They'll pass it on as soon as he's out of his session." She looks down at me. "Do you need to use the bathroom?"

I do, but not enough to piss in a urinal while tied down, and after I shake my head again, she finally goes. The tremors in my hands intensify not long after the door closes. Spasms that jerk through my leg muscles. Bouts of violent trembling that start in my chest and refuse to be quelled, radiating up until my teeth clack together.

The straps. The bed. The sharp, sterile bite of disinfectants stinging my nose with every breath. Tape from a freshly removed needle pulling at the hair on my arm. Rooms devoid of human contact, doctors and Capitol technicians alike preferring the anonymity of one-way glass once I begin to scream. Heart pounding so hard it hurts, I screw my eyes shut.

There's a sharp rap at the door, slightly quicker and more annoyed than usual, but I immediately know who it is. He's the only one who ever bothers to knock before entering, which is all kinds of pointless since everyone has a keycard for the door except me and I'm not even allowed to walk around on my own, but he seems like just the type who would get off on dumb things like that.

I hear him drag the chair around the side of my bed. A page rustles, a pen first clicking and then beginning to scratch. I swallow, but don't open my eyes.

"Take them off."

Dr. Aurelius waits a moment and clears his throat. "I need you to calm down first, and then I'll remove them."

I bark out a laugh, but with the tremors it just sounds pathetic.

"Fuck you."

He ignores me. When I open my eyes he's frowning.

"What happened this morning, Peeta?"

Grunting, I just shake my head. He waits while I try and fail to stop tears from welling in my eyes. Hating him even more, I turn away.

"Let me go," I counter, voice rising, realizing only after the words leave my mouth exactly how much Katniss must loathe me for what I've done. That wherever she is in her _safe and secure place_ that must feel even more like a prison than mine, she has once again been stripped of any autonomy, and this time, _I_ was the one to do it by preventing her from swallowing the Nightlock capsule and ending her life.

Dr. Aurelius leans forward and speaks softly. "I will remove the restraints, Peeta, just as soon as you can demonstrate you can control your-"

"Go fuck yourself."

Practically spitting it, I look away, shaking too hard to add much of anything else. We sit there while a minute turns into two, and then three, and snot starts to run down my face.

Finally Dr. Aurelius rises from the chair and pulls it to the opposite corner of the room. I swallow, watching guardedly as he returns to release the strap on one of my wrist restraints.

The tremors momentarily intensify as I pull my hand from the cuff and fumble to free the other, and I'm having such trouble with the buckle that when he drops a box of tissues at the foot of my bed, I jerk back like he's stabbed me.

He returns to his chair without saying anything. For a minute, I just ignore him and the tissues, but by the time I finish getting my ankle free, I feel disgusting enough to grab a handful before backing up to the head of the bed.

Face dry, I slump against the wall, the constriction in my chest starting to ease. Dr. Aurelius peers over the rim of his glasses when I bend down to get my prosthetic.

I frown, eyeing him warily. "Can I use the bathroom?"

"Of course."

I don't bother looking at him when I come out. Returning to the same spot at the end of the bed, I prop my arms on my knees, head down. After a moment, Dr. Aurelius clears his throat.

"Do you want to tell me why you were upset?"

I shrug and we sit there for another minute in angry silence. And suddenly I have the strange, fuzzy memory of Haymitch teaching me to play chess by the fire after supper and his explanation of the meaning of the term _stalemate_, because even if refusing to answer withholds the one thing I have that Dr. Aurelius wants, there's no one else likely to actually listen. And so after a minute I blow out my breath and scrub both hands through my hair.

"I wasn't _upset_," I explain slowly, biting back annoyance. "I just asked them for some paper and they-"

"You _asked_ them?" He says it gently, but there's an emphasis on the word meant to draw my attention.

Frowning, I open my mouth, starting to protest that I _had_ asked or at least that I'd tried to. But he just calmly folds his hands and waits long enough that the rest of it starts to trickle back, including some of the particularly vile things I screamed at Hadriana right before she jabbed me with the needle, and shame begins to claw with hot fingers at my neck and cheeks.

He doesn't say anything when I start fiddling with the edge of the blanket. Another full minute passes before I lift my head.

"I remembered something," I say quietly. "A dream. I . . . just for a second, I felt-"

Dr. Aurelius begins to write, interjecting only when it's clear I'm not going to continue on my own.

"Felt what, Peeta?"

"I'm . . . not sure," I admit. "It was right after I threw Katniss the bread-the next day at school. She looked over at me, just for a minute. And then I saw her bend down to pick a dandelion, just like before, but this time . . . it was different."

He's silent for a moment.

"Different how?"

My mouth opens and closes several times before I finally lower my head in frustration, the words failing to form.

"I don't know." Balling one hand into a fist, I shake my head. "I _knew_ this would happen-I _tried_ to tell them it would be too late, that I would forget it like I forget everything else."

Dr. Aurelius glances up. "Peeta, did you even consider using the voice reco-"

"I didn't want to write it down," I snap, cutting him off in a sharp tone I can somehow picture the old me cringing at. "I wanted to _draw_ it."

He just looks at me for a moment, and then turns to stare thoughtfully out the window as if he's actually considering my request.

Suddenly kicking myself for not having worked up to asking a little more nicely, I wait as long as I can stand it and then start to pick at the tape on the bandage affixed to my hand.

"I'm not trying to kill myself."

"No," he agrees, faster than I'm expecting it. Caught off guard, I barely have time to look up before he continues. "But according to the accounts of your squad members, you asked _them_ to do so at multiple points during the assault on the Capitol."

I just stare back at him, breathing low and shallow. It is an unspoken betrayal that has no name and no face, each of them as likely to have committed it as the last. Pollux. Gale. Cressida.

Katniss.

_Who can I trust? Well, us for starters. We're your squad._

Dr. Aurelius continues when I offer nothing. "You were . . . _uncooperative,_ at best, on the occasions I visited you down in the burn unit, were brought in after the assassination in hysterics and had to be sedated-"

"That's not fair," I interrupt, glaring when he falls silent and affixes me with a calm, patient look he knows annoys me to no end, like I'm crazy and he's not and it's so obvious that he's content just to sit there and wait until I figure it out for myself. "I _stopped_ Katniss from killing herself. Don't I get any credit for that? They drag her away after killing the wrong president and you won't tell me anything. How the fuck do you expect me to react?"

The question hangs in the air for what seems an eternity after I look away, unable to maintain eye contact. Because both of us know the answer dances around a subject I've so far refused to talk about-what happened to Mitchell after I went into a flashback and knocked him into a pod-and I'm not about to go into it now.

After a moment, he leans forward and clears his throat. "And what about your hand, Peeta?"

Not responding, I keep my eyes focused on a shadowy speck on an otherwise spotless white wall, throat tightening when he continues in a quiet voice.

"The wound on your hand that you have proceeded to purposefully reopen every day since it was stitched shut." He waits, allowing the words to sink in. "On exactly what behavior of yours are you suggesting I base the decision to allow you independent access to sharp objects?"

I shift around a little. "Charcoal pencils aren't that sharp-"

"They're sharp enough."

Muttering something rude under my breath, I slump back against the pillow.

"One pencil," I finally say, glancing in his direction, but not quite looking at him. "For an hour at a time at first, supervised with one of the nurses there, if you don't believe me. And I'll-"

My throat closes and I choke out a cough. Because right then I know what I could give up that might be enough to convince him. But it's a gamble. To trade the last thing I can be sure was real for memories that might never return. Swallowing, I stare down at the back of my hand, trying to recall that flicker of feeling, soft as the tail of a sun-warmed braid.

"-let it heal," I manage to finish in an odd sort of strangled voice, lifting my hand a few inches to indicate what I mean.

Dr. Aurelius studies me in silence while I pick at the edge of the bandage. Rising from the chair, he slides his clipboard under one arm and gestures to my hand.

"I'll send Decima in to redress that and will discuss the rest with your team."

Eyeing him a bit less warily, I don't answer, but allow a small nod.

The following morning, a boxed set of charcoals and a thick pad of paper are delivered to my room, along with a list of conditions.

My pencils will be counted twice a day when the nurses come in to clean and check my hand. They will hold the sharpener. Any attempt to hurt myself or someone else and my supplies will be taken away. I will be subject to a full physical inspection during my weekly medical exams, which is nothing new, and my team decides to let me use the pencils as many hours a day as I want after all.

And for the first time since arriving at the hospital, I think I might be starting to trust Dr. Aurelius.

.

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Comments are like fresh-baked cheese buns, delivered to your door by Peeta. Would love to hear what you thought :)


	2. Things that Should Count for Something

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**Chapter Two: Things that Should Count for Something**

_"__My nightmares are usually about losing you. I'm okay once I realize you're here."_

.

.

No matter how they might end, my memories of the train always begin in precisely the same way.

With the sound of Katniss Everdeen's screams.

Images flicker back in the early morning hours as I lie alone and awake in my room in Thirteen. Strapped to the bed, I fight to get away from visions no one else can see, cursing and writhing until a nurse enters to administer the usual dose of sedative. Maddeningly, the same ones come over and over. Fragments that make no sense. Pieces of a puzzle I can't assemble without the picture on the front of the box. A hallway I don't recognize. A lavish meal. The forgotten taste of warm, spiced milk. An Avox attendant waiting at the door. The memory of lying awake in a dim compartment while Katniss sleeps in my arms.

With some reluctance, Haymitch confirms it.

Eventually I come to remember pacing a series of long corridors, roaming them night after night until exhaustion leaves me no choice but to sleep. As the train rolls across district after district under the cover of darkness, it becomes little more than a vast mechanical prison. Katniss and I cling to each other just as we did in the cave, rendered two more of the Capitol's caged animals, unable to escape the lingering psychological torment they've left us with any more than we could their arenas.

From behind a locked door I cannot force open, her screams grow more desperate. I claw at the wood until my fingers bleed, pounding and shoving with weakening fists as the electric lights one by one begin to short out. A familiar wave of panic seizes my chest as the darkness slowly spreads through the compartment, her voice drifting further and further away.

_Katniss._

Her name, even in the faintest whisper, closes my throat easily as the pressure of my hands once choked off air to hers. Yanked to my feet in the dark, I am dragged, struggling and blindfolded, down another hallway, one I have never seen, but know by its sounds of something mechanical humming in the background and by the sharp, medicinal sting of disinfectant that permeates every breath, dread coursing through my veins long before they strap me to the chair and insert the first needle, start the flow of venom that will bring on the hallucinations.

They wait until I start to scream to remove the hood. Katniss looms over me on the screen, hair tangled and wild, fangs bared. An electrical shock is delivered if I try to look away. I twist in the chair until my arms are chafed raw from the restraints, scream until my voice goes hoarse and then fails entirely, mute and powerless to cry out as the nameless, faceless Avox who comes in the dark to empty the bucket of waste from the corner of my cell. Her teeth close on my throat. Sick with panic, I finally break free, one arm banging against something cold and metallic.

_"Fuck." _

Panting, I sit up and scrub a hand over my face, oblivious to the newly-regrown grafts of skin stretched in a patchwork across my forehead until a searing fire breaks out behind the path of my fingers. I curse again under my breath.

_Not real._

In the dark, the words feel slippery and impossible to cling to as a freshly-greased pan. I grope for the wall panel, fumble for the cup of water on the nightstand and try to slow my breathing.

"Not real," I repeat, hands trembling violently. "Not real, not re-"

"Peeta?"

The water cup goes spinning across the floor. Vision blackening at the edges, I cower back against the pillows, needing several seconds to place the voice as familiar. Only after a period of intense concentration do I eventually identify the speaker as _Decima_. Remember that I'm in the Capitol. In the hospital.

Swallowing, I clear my throat. "Yeah?"

_Her_ image rushes back the second I squint my eyes shut. Taunting my inferiority alongside the tracks leading back to Twelve, a handful of flowers she wants even less than me dangling limply from her hand as if she wishes she had a better excuse to discard us both. Laughing at my screams as the venom goes in. Depressing the plunger on the needle herself.

I moan and grip the bedrails so hard my knuckles turn white. The images fail to dissipate, only shift, Katniss' arms twined around the neck of a tall, dark-haired figure whose face I don't need to see to know I loathe, their bows tossed aside and hunting clothes askew, hips bucking greedily as they rut against a tree.

"-you need anything?" Decima's voice comes back over the intercom.

Flinching, I blink, unsure how much time has passed.

"I'm okay."

It's a lie and both of us know it, but the intercom falls silent anyway. Slumping back on the pillow, I stare up at the ceiling for an undetermined amount of time and then reach into the drawer for my charcoals and sketchpad, the Katniss Everdeen who lives in the latter's pages taking up silent battle with the one it sometimes seems I have no power to subdue for control of my mind.

Compared to the vast array of supplies at my disposal back in Twelve, it isn't much. A couple of pencils. A pad of paper. And yet, being able to capture the exact angle of her mouth as she sleeps, the hope in her eyes as she watches me from across the schoolyard, and the dark scowl that's quick to form as she glares across the table at Haymitch in a way that can't be taken from me brings a relief that is all but _indescribable_.

The sharp, smoky tang of charcoal wafts up from the paper the second I lift the cover. Taking a breath, I lick my lips and prepare for the inevitable jolt from eyes that still haunt my every dream and nightmare.

And then with a flip of the page, she's there.

One hand is clasped securely around Prim's, their arms painfully thin, elbows and shoulders protruding in sharp points through threadbare sweaters. There is a furrow of determination etched in her brow as she stares transfixed at the dandelion clutched tight in one fist, so much so that I can almost watch her jaw tense in the seconds before she grips Prim's fingers tighter and drags her from the schoolyard, strong, stubborn, and infinitely brave.

_"__Katniss."_

Eyes closed, I whisper it reverently, tasting each soft syllable of her name like it was the most delectable of frosted tiger lily cookies. It is in the deafening silence that follows that my heart begins to sink through my chest.

Swallowing, I flip ahead to the sketch I've failed for the better part of a week to get right. The perspective is an odd one. Head pillowed against my arm, she's contorted at an angle across the expanse of the paper, eyes closed and face guarded even in sleep, careful to give away no hint of what she's really thinking. Studying the curve of her lips, I wait for something, _anything_, to come.

_You didn't have any nightmares last night._

Just like every other time, the words are curled around the flickering, remembered sensation of trailing a hand slowly through her hair, the dark strands slipping silky and fine through my fingertips, each touch performed delicately as if it might be the last.

_I had a dream, though. I was following a mockingjay through the woods. _

Her voice is thin in my memory. Unsure. Pale and indistinctly scrawled as though it might be washed away easily as chalk drawings on the paving stones after the first few fat splatters of rain begin to fall.

"You slept like you were happy," I whisper to the sketch, struggling to remember what it was that came next.

Frustration slowly creeps in, any semblance of clarity, for the eighth night in a row, failing to form. The silence growing painfully still, I select a stick of charcoal, darkness once again hovering in the room's every corner as I blow out a slow breath and focus on carefully shading in the empty space where Katniss Everdeen has draped her hand loosely over my heart.

.

.

"Try to keep going, Peeta."

Exhaling, I lower my head, starting to pick at the bandage on the back of my hand before remembering to stop myself. The healing scar now covered only by a loose dressing, it's grown annoyingly itchy.

Dr. Aurelius waits, my sketch of Katniss holding the dandelion resting on the end of the bed between us.

I stare at it for a minute, still fumbling for the right words. It probably shouldn't have come as a surprise when he asked about them in our sessions. Not that I really wanted to show the sketches to anyone, him included, but it was a little hard to justify refusing after he'd overriden the objections of all the other doctors and trusted me with the pencils.

"I . . . can't exactly describe _what_ the feeling is," I finally say. "It was just sort of . . . _there._"

Running a hand through my hair, I look away, the words that do form ones I can't help the urge to instinctively guard, particularly from someone who wants to dig around in my head with little more finesse than the hijackers who screwed things up in the first place. And there's no way I'm ever telling him or anyone else that it felt warm and private and kind of soft. That just for a split second, everything made _sense_, months and months of questions with answers that could never be trusted, confusion and self-loathing choking every distorted memory I failed to reclaim, the first tendrils of feeling returning with a surety that made me want to curl up in bed and moan in relief.

I frown, realizing he's still looking at me, and shrug my shoulders. "Right then . . . I knew why I'd done it."

"And you didn't, before?"

Leaning back in bed, I consider the question. "Not really. That's why I wanted to see her. You know, back in Thirteen? To see if something would start to make sense if I did."

Dr. Aurelius writes for a moment and then straightens, adjusting his glasses with one hand. "And now? Why do you think you threw her the bread?"

"I wanted to protect her." I don't look at him, choosing instead to stare out the window at the gray winter morning while snowflakes swirl down.

There's a weighted silence and then he leans forward. "May I see the others?"

The noise in the back of my throat escapes before I can stop it. His eyes flick up. Not meeting them, I wave a hand in grudging acquiescence and flop back against the pillows.

He flips the pages in silence, pausing to rotate the final sketch for a more careful look.

"This is the one you worked on last night?"

I grunt in confirmation, earning another faint frown.

Gesturing to the drawing, Dr. Aurelius nods. "Can you describe what you remember happening?"

More agitated by the second, I fold my arms and shrug. He peers at me, brow furrowing deeper. Unable to hold back any longer, I ball both hands into fists.

"Do you get to see her?"

The scratch of the pen stops. Glowering in his general direction, but without direct eye contact, I shake my head. "I mean, you _are_ treating her too, aren't you? Just like Annie and Johanna?"

The last part is admittedly a guess, Annie having shrugged when I asked, but it _feels_ right, the probability he would've been randomly assigned two victors and not more of us less likely than the alternative.

Suddenly on edge, I pick at a thread on the leg of my loose hospital-issue pants, desperate enough to cling to the hope of an answer I should probably know by now isn't coming. Dr. Aurelius clears his throat, voice calm and annoyingly unruffled.

"Peeta, if you don't feel like talking any more today, we can always end our session early."

_And there it is._

I scoff and roll my eyes. He just waits, reading over his notes without even bothering to look at me while I debate telling him to go fuck himself. It rolls around on the tip of my tongue as a minute turns to two, the voice in the back of my mind taunting it on.

But then I catch a glimpse of Katniss' face on the page between us, mouth soft and slack in sleep, and anger is once again replaced by the urge to rip open the scar her mouth left on the back of my hand and cradle her close to me if only for a few fleeting moments of agony.

Blowing out a long breath, I keep my eyes affixed to a point on the ceiling.

"Why haven't I remembered anything else?"

Dr. Aurelius doesn't answer right away. "You have to be patient, Peeta. You've made considerable progress over the past few weeks. Last night you were able to use the techniques we've practiced to prevent yourself from fully entering a flashback state. That's really quite-"

"If this is working, then why hasn't anything else come back?" I burst out, running a hand through my hair in frustration. "You told me to go through as many memories as I could, record them on that fucking audio thing, and I _did_-we sat here going through them for hours-"

"Peeta-"

"-but none of it is _doing_ anything." Halfway yelling it, I look away for a minute to calm down, not wanting him to sedate me again. "I have the same _fucking_ dream over and over, every night, but it never-"

He raises an eyebrow, waiting for me to continue, but I just shake my head.

"This is the one from the train?"

I grunt in confirmation. He flips through his notes.

"You've stated before that this particular memory doesn't feel like it's been tampered with. Does that still feel true?"

My leg starts getting sore and I sit up a little more to shift it. "It's not shiny at all. There's nothing _in_ it that feels like they were trying to turn me against Katniss. I'm not even sure they knew we used to," my face grows hot, "spend the night that way. It's just-"

Dr. Aurelius nods and begins to write.

Swallowing, I look down, mumbling more to the imprint of Katniss' teeth than to him, "In the other one, the one with the bread, I was so . . . _sure._ That it was real. Standing there, watching her pick the dandelion, I knew without a doubt it was _mine_, not something that someone else put there."

"Yes," he says quietly. "And given the uncertainty you've lived with every moment since the hijacking-false implanted images and hazy recollections you can never fully trust-a memory that strong must have felt especially valuable."

Unable to look at him, I pick at the thread on my pants again, voice thick and chest tight when I finally manage to speak. "So tell me how to get others back."

After a moment, he clears his throat.

"Peeta, I know this answer isn't what you want to hear, but in large part, the solution may giving what we've already been doing time and space to work." He holds up a hand when I start to interrupt. "It may also be beneficial for you to reestablish some of your old routines."

"Such as?" I counter, frowning.

Dr. Aurelius affixes me with a patient smile. "You're sketching again, which is good." He raises an eyebrow. "But we've talked before about the importance of you baking again, getting out of your room more-"

I laugh sharply at this, but he ignores me and continues.

"-and taking back some of the things you used to enjoy before the Hunger Games and the war disrupted your life."

_"__Going through the motions,"_ I mutter, mimicking not only the suggestion itself but his stuffy Capitol accent.

"Yes, that's right." Ignoring my tone, Dr. Aurelius smooths his tie. "You might be surprised how much it can help to reestablish a sense of normalcy. At first it may seem silly, but one day you could find-"

"Yeah, I'm allowed out into the common areas for an hour a day," I remind him. "Accompanied by one of the nurses, and never anywhere there aren't ten cameras. There's nothing _normal_ about it. You really think it's safe to let me in the kitchen where they keep all the knives?"

We stare at each other for several seconds, and then Dr. Aurelius sighs and adjusts his glasses.

"Peeta, you asked me how to increase the likelihood of more memories from before your hijacking reemerging. It is my theory, after listening to your account of _what_ has come back and _when_, that you've been capable of recalling these emotions from your earlier interactions with Katniss all along, but that your hijacked side, which up until now has been significantly stronger, has successfully repressed any conflicting emotions from your primary personality that threatened to break through."

Pausing to let that sink in, he slowly nods.

"Instead it forces you into a flashback or transfers the emerging emotion into anger. It's only now that your work with reverse hijacking is starting to gain traction and the physiological after-effects of the venom have lessened with time that you're coming to a place where you should be able to feel things again with less and less interference."

Finally he's silent, allowing me a chance to mull it all over while he waits.

"Maybe that makes sense," I say at last, "but I haven't had anything come up until now that felt like that one memory did."

"Not consciously, no, but I suspect if you think back carefully you'll find there were probably many instances you were being subconsciously driven by emotions retained from before the hijacking far more than you may have realized at the time."

"Such as?"

He flips through his notes. "What about the incident with Katniss in the cafeteria at District Thirteen?"

I grunt under my breath.

"That was different."

He waits a minute. "Was it?"

Anger rising, I refuse to look at him.

"I didn't feel anything back then except pissed off by what she'd done."

"Then you'll have to explain something to me, Peeta." Dr. Aurelius folds his hands, voice calm. "With an entire cafeteria full of people to sit with, why target Katniss at all?"

Ignoring him, I pick at the edge of the bandage.

"You're quite personable when you choose to be, certainly capable of sustaining a conversation with a new acquaintance for the course of a meal-"

Jaw clenched tight, I shake my head. "I shouldn't have _had_ to sit somewhere new just because of _her._ They were _my_ friends too-"

"Why walk up to the one person at the one table you had to know would cause trouble?" He raises an eyebrow, continuing when I don't answer. "Why pick a fight likely to get you put on restrictions for days unless-"

"That's not what I did," I burst out, practically shouting. "It was _Gale._"

Breathing hard, I turn away when heat crawls up my neck, the words sounding that much more pathetic the moment they hit my ears, so much so it's easy to picture Katniss laughing even after I squeeze my eyes shut and try to force the image out. But her voice echoes mine, calling his name in desperation just like she did that last day at Snow's execution. _Gale_, not Peeta. The question of who Katniss Everdeen can't survive without playing out in front of the cameras with the sort of dramatic flair Panem hadn't seen since the Games, it's a wonder the ratings spike didn't make Plutarch Heavensbee come in his pants.

"Peeta?"

Jerking at the sound of his voice, I blink and hunch my shoulders, grabbing the sketchbook off the end of the bed before he can take it away.

"You can go now."

Dr. Aurelius studies me for a moment and rises from the chair, dragging it back to the corner of the room.

"I'll see you tomorrow, Peeta."

I swallow and flip back to the drawing of Katniss, not bothering to answer him.

.

.

When the door to my hospital room in Thirteen slides open shortly before the evening shift change, it admits four doctors instead of the usual one.

_Katniss. Haymitch. Hijacking. Venom. Tracker Jacker. Snow. Capitol. Rebellion. Hovercraft. Quarter Quell. Twelve . . ._

After demonstrating sufficient exposure tolerance to a list of words pre-determined to be triggers, I'm asked to review some of the clips from the Games they've shown me before, explaining their version of events in my own words. It's without a doubt the harder of the two tasks, especially considering half the time I don't believe most of what I'm saying. But the questions are nothing new, nor the long list of tests probing my reaction to various forms of stimuli.

It is the frowns I receive upon answering in a manner of which they had previously indicated approval that give me pause.

Finally the head doctor steps back and gestures to the guards at the door. I make no move to protest when they hold up the shackles, extending my wrists with a calm, complacent smile.

"You remember the rules we discussed," he warns, and I catch a look exchanged between the others.

Ignoring it, I simply nod. "Of course."

We stare at one another. And then with obvious reluctance, he steps aside so the guards can escort me from the room.

Our walk to the end of the tunnel that forms the hospital wing takes place in silence. I know the older of the two guards is Greer, the one whose face is riddled with pockmarks, Sanders. They slow at the end of the hallway when I do, coming no closer in a silent reminder we are not friends. Not acquaintances. And nor am I even someone whose presence they grudgingly tolerate. That despite a solid month of cooperative behavior, I am neither liked nor trusted.

I clear my throat and turn over one shoulder to address them. "Which way is it?"

Greer gestures with his chin. "Left." His fingers flex on the butt of the gun, voice quickly losing what little patience it held. "Let's go, Mellark. Doc said you get half an hour."

It's no better five minutes later once I've gone through the serving line while people stop to stare, been issued a tray I can't quite grip with my hands cuffed, the bowl of thick, savory stew threatening to slide across its slick gray plastic surface and crash into the two pale, flavorless slices of bread I already know I won't enjoy, and stand surveying the open room, unable to stop myself from searching for the one person I've just spent an hour back in my room silently reminding myself I shouldn't _want_ to see.

It happens in an instant. A movement I almost don't catch out of the corner of my eye as Finnick gestures wildly in the air. The ensuing laughter that erupts at the table around him. Delly smiling and shaking her head as she turns to the smaller figure just to her right who sits hunched over a bowl identical to mine, nibbling at a piece of gravy-soaked bread.

The tray lurches where it rests balanced precariously on my fingertips. Katniss bends to take another bite, mouth small and wet and pink as it slowly wraps around the spoon. In the sixteen days that have passed since she stalked out of my hospital room, I have tried every hour of every day not to think of her. Of the way her braid hung crookedly over one shoulder. Of the brief flashes of confusion that passed through her cold gray eyes. And yet there is no denying that along with the immediate surge of hatred that comes as I study the angles and curves of her face, there is a disconcerting sense of . . . _something_ that floods my chest as I stand, rooted in place, heart thudding uncomfortably, mouth having long since gone dry.

And then, before I have time to question _what_ it might be, to draw a breath, or even to frown, Delly reaches for something across the table and I see who is seated on Katniss' other side.

The air vacates my lungs in the space of a beat, the sight of Johanna waving her napkin in obvious annoyance, of Finnick staring adoringly at Annie all but unnoticed as I watch Gale lean over and nudge her elbow, murmur something meant just for the two of them in the protected crevice just behind her ear.

I don't realize my feet have started moving until I'm there. She's laughing at something Finnick said in the moment our eyes meet, guilt and panic reddening her cheeks as she chokes on a mouthful of bread.

"Peeta," Delly exclaims, the prolonged seconds of hesitation that follow marking the statement as suspect. "It's so nice to see you out . . . and about."

Only Johanna seems completely unfazed. "What's with the fancy bracelets?"

"I'm not quite trustworthy yet." Watching Katniss cover her mouth in a poor attempt to hide another strangled cough, I gesture to the guards. "I can't even sit here without your permission."

"Sure he can sit here. We're old friends."

Greer shifts in place, but finally nods his assent. I take a seat. The conversation immediately dies off, spoons clinking against bowls, everyone studying their stewed turnips like they were the most fascinating thing in the world.

Elbows propped at a sharp angle, Katniss sinks lower every second, steadfastly refusing to meet my eye. I watch the spoon tremble in her fingers as she tries to lift it to her lips, a wayward bite of potato and onion tumbling back into her bowl.

Johanna wipes her mouth and states matter-of-factly, "Peeta and I had adjoining cells in the Capitol. We're very familiar with each other's screams."

Flinching, I duck my head before Katniss can see, just catching Finnick's angry glare as he circles an arm protectively around Annie. He leans closer to murmur something in her ear with such tenderness it draws an ache dull as an old knife buried deep in my chest. Unable to look any more, I face my bowl and start forcing down mouthfuls of bread and beef stew even though I can barely taste a thing.

"What?" Johanna continues harshly. "My head doctor says I'm not supposed to censor my thoughts. It's part of my therapy."

No one answers her. Risking another look at Katniss, I note she's stopped eating altogether and is pushing one last potato around her bowl through a lake of gravy, complexion pale and mouth unnaturally flat like she's barely able to keep it steady. Gale glances over in concern. Anger flashes again, and with it, a note of dark satisfaction when Katniss seems to shrink even further into herself.

Setting her spoon down, Delly clears her throat.

"Annie," she says brightly, "did you know it was Peeta who decorated your wedding cake? Back home, his family ran the bakery and he did all the icing."

The jolt this time is smaller, more contained, because despite any feelings of loss or regret Delly's words might stir, there's never any anger behind them, no bitterness or thinly-veiled rage threatening to cut down everyone and everything in their path like the finely-sharpened blade of an axe.

Annie cautiously peers around Johanna's shaved head, hair trailing dangerously close to her empty bowl before Finnick lovingly lifts it out of the way. I grit my teeth.

"Thank you, Peeta. It was beautiful."

The words soft, our eyes meet, and I catch in the brief quiver in her chin that she's thinking it too, what the others could just as easily overlook. _Annie, Johanna and me_, seated in a row the same way we were back in the Capitol. There for each other's beatings. For the electrocutions. For the rapes. For screams that went on for hours until vocal cords gave out. For filthy, blood-encrusted fingers clawing desperately at scraps of cold meat and bread the guards would spit and piss on or worse before sliding through the crack under the door, hatred, desperation and shame words insufficient to describe what it was to grovel for every last crumb while they laughed, the three of us forever linked in a way none of the others would ever really understand.

"My pleasure, Annie," I say quietly.

Finnick stands and takes both their trays. "If we're going to fit in that walk, we better go." Nodding briefly to me, he helps Annie up, never letting go of her hand. "Good seeing you, Peeta."

It's as I stare at their linked fingers that an inexplicable anger starts to rise, something in the trusting way her hand fit into his threatening to send it flaring out of control, every small flex and shift in direction graced with a well-practiced fluidity that suggested they had moved that way together a thousand times before. Risking a look in Katniss' direction, I find her pulverizing her last bites of potato with the flat edge of her spoon and refusing to lift her chin no matter how insistently Gale nudges her arm. My lip curls.

The only one of us who had returned from the Capitol to find someone who cared waiting, it was little wonder Annie alone had come through the worst of it unscathed.

I let out a humorless laugh. "You be nice to her, Finnick. Or I might try and take her away from you."

But Finnick just shakes his head. "Oh, Peeta," he says lightly. "Don't make me sorry I restarted your heart."

The table goes uncomfortably quiet and I stare down at my bowl, hating Katniss that much more for having turned them all against me.

Delly waits until Finnick and Annie are gone to frown. "He _did_ save your life, Peeta. More than once."

"For _her_." It's impossible to keep disgust from lacing even the most impersonal reference to her, so I don't bother trying, nodding once in Katniss' direction. "For the rebellion. Not for me. I don't owe him anything-"

"Maybe not-"

The first words she's spoken since my arrival, the sound of her voice causes the hair at the back of my neck to stand on end and my heart to race, a visceral reaction I can neither control nor contain. Swallowing, I lift my head, unafraid to meet the steely fury of her anger from across the table.

"-but Mags is dead and you're still here." Staring back at me, Katniss wads her napkin into a ball. "That should count for something."

I lean forward.

"Yeah, a lot of things should count for something that don't seem to, Katniss." Waiting a beat, I frown. "I've got some memories I can't make sense of, and I don't think the Capitol touched them. A lot of nights on the train, for instance."

Our eyes remain locked for only a handful of seconds before she looks away, but the slow reddening of her cheeks is proof enough to make up for all the answers I can never trust her to truthfully share.

Barely resisting the urge to gloat when Gale tenses beside her, I gesture with my spoon between the two of them. "So, are you two officially a couple now, or are they still dragging out the star-crossed lover thing?"

"Still dragging," Johanna announces once it's clear Katniss has no intention of doing anything other than scowl at a gravy-sodden slice of bread.

But I simply stare across the table at her, glean from the stubborn set of her jaw and angry slit of her eyes that she feels no remorse, regrets _nothing_ that she's done. Perhaps even blames _me_ for keeping her and Gale apart for so long.

_Whore._

My hands clench into fists. Katniss watches out of the corner of one eye, seemingly unable to look away as I slowly force my fingers to unknot, breathing tight and shallow as if she's finally coming to understand that no matter the hours, days, and weeks of therapies they might strap me to a bed and force me to endure on her behalf, there's a part of me that will always see her as a monster, _always_ hate her for what she's done.

Beside her, Gale makes a sound under his breath. "I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it myself."

I force myself to look at him for the first time.

"What's that?"

"You," he says bluntly.

Barking out a laugh that sounds infinitely more blithe than the hole forming in my chest, I shake my head. "You'll have to be a little more specific. What about me?"

It's Johanna who answers.

"That they've replaced you with the evil-mutt version of yourself."

No one attempts to contradict her, not even Delly.

Gale chugs the last of his milk and turns to Katniss, voice once again low even though he must know we can all still easily hear.

"You done?"

Anger, bitterness, and for one sickening moment, _envy_, roll over me in waves when she stands to follow him, sparing not so much as a glance in my direction. The table left empty but for me, Delly and Johanna, I don't know how long I stare down at the bits of meat and congealed fat left in my bowl, only that the spoon in my hand is the same muted gray of Katniss Everdeen's eyes, and that the moment I finally look up is when Delly begins to yell.

For a girl I can't remember ever shouting at me when we were kids, she's awfully good at it.

I stop listening after the first few sentences about how Katniss hasn't done anything wrong and it's all my hijacking to blame, and stare past the guard at the door where she left. Wondering if she was letting _him_ take her back to her room, wherever that was here. If _he_ was the one she used now to hold her at night so she wouldn't have to be alone when the nightmares came. Hating that I even cared. Wondering why I would have _ever_ cared about a girl who clearly cared nothing for me.

_Enemy. Fiancee. Lover. Mutt._

I don't realize I've started speaking aloud until I hear Greer's voice behind me.

"Looks like you're all done, _Lover Boy._"

I start to protest that I'm not, but discover someone has, in fact, finished my stew. Yanked unceremoniously from the bench, I am led away while Delly continues to yell, without so much as a goodbye from Johanna, and with the image of Katniss Everdeen and _him_ seared indelibly into my brain.

.

.

"Are you treating her too?"

Dr. Aurelius doesn't look up from his clipboard. Rolling my eyes, I prop an arm on my good leg and gesture in the air.

"Will you at least _ask_ her if she hates me?"

He finishes writing and clears his throat. "What would make you think that, Peeta?"

Shrugging, I fiddle with my prosthetic and stretch out on the bed. "She seemed pretty mad after I stopped her from swallowing the nightlock."

His voice is calm.

"Wasn't there a point during the fighting here in the Capitol that your positions were reversed?"

I grunt but don't answer, both of us well aware that there was and where he's going with this, both of us also equally aware how much I hate his stupid head games. He waits a minute and prods again.

"In that instance, didn't Katniss intercede in much the same way on your behalf?"

"It's not the same," I argue, mostly to shut him up.

At this, he smiles faintly. "How so?"

"She's not very forgiving."

Studying my face for a moment, Dr. Aurelius begins to write. He doesn't push, even when the silence stretches out, and I realize I'm starting to kind of like that about him, even if there's no way I'm ever telling him so.

Staring out the window, I finally exhale.

"It's stuck in my head."

"What is, Peeta?"

I swallow. "The way she looked at me, that last second, right before they ripped us apart. She-"

I mess with the drawstring on my pants, not looking up.

"She told me to let her go, and I said, 'I can't.'" Heat crawls up my neck, shame and anger constricting into an indiscernible knot when my voice cracks at the end. "And then she . . . turned away from me, started screaming for _Gale_."

His name comes out somewhere between a curse and a sneer, something close to the way I'm pretty sure he usually says mine.

If Dr. Aurelius is surprised, he doesn't show it. Picking up his pen again, he carefully writes everything down. _"I can't."_ He raises an eyebrow. "What did you mean by that when you said it?"

I frown. "She wanted to kill herself-"

"Yes, that much I understood." Dr. Aurelius pushes his glasses up. "It's your choice of words that seems more important at the moment. Sometimes what comes to mind unprompted-what we say when there isn't sufficient time to pick and choose our words-winds up holding a greater degree of truth than we might otherwise give it credit for."

Sighing heavily, I slump back on the pillow without bothering to answer, the conversation having taken an annoying turn I hadn't anticipated. He waits a few seconds and continues.

"Of all the things you could've said, _this_ is what came out with no time to prepare and in a moment of great stress. That you _can't_ let Katniss go."

Exhaling, I rub my face. "I don't know. Can we talk about something else?"

"Of course. What would you like to-"

"Where is Katniss?"

Dr. Aurelius is silent for a minute, and then leans forward. "Peeta, do you remember what we agreed on at the start of this session?"

I make a derisive sound under my breath, not remembering having _agreed_ to anything at all, his insistence we try spending the first fifteen minutes on subjects _other_ than Katniss sounding not entirely unlike an admonishment.

"So what, I'm supposed to just sit here, pretending to give a fuck for fifteen minutes of head doctor talk?"

Setting the clipboard aside, he slowly nods. "It's important we-"

"Fine." Folding my arms, I turn to stare up at the ceiling. "What is it you want to talk about?"

Dr. Aurelius sighs. "Peeta-"

"-and how many more minutes do we have left?"

He ignores the question, but after a moment, continues in a quieter voice. "Part of the work we need to do in recovering your memory is to help you reestablish your sense of self independent of Katniss." Flipping back through his notes, he clears his throat. "You told me last week, _'She's everywhere in my head, but none of it makes any sense. One minute I think I want to kill her. I hate her, I'm so angry. And the next, I want to-"_

"Yeah, I remember," I cut him off, face once again starting to flame.

"The vast majority of your memories were formed independently of Katniss. At some point we need to expand our discussions to take on a broader scope."

Grunting, I shake my head, failing to hear how pathetic the next words will sound until they've already left my mouth.

"But the most important ones happened _with_ her."

"Perhaps," he allows. "But from my understanding of the circumstances, it was sixteen years before the two of you first spoke. We can't just ignore that period of your life or treat it as if it doesn't matter."

My cheeks grow hot. He doesn't say it unkindly, but it still stirs the vague recollection of Haymitch laughing and reaching for a bottle of white liquor while pointing out the same, the clear insinuation I was unmanly in his estimation for never having worked up the courage to talk to her still less embarrassing than the remembered term I'd overheard the doctors in Thirteen use for what they classified as a years-long preoccupation only exacerbated by the effects of the hijacking.

_Fixation._

"Peeta?"

I refuse to look up at him, instead picking at the bandage on my hand, hating him for trying to rip her away from me and ashamed to admit there were nights I still tucked the second pillow from my bed up under my chin in the same place she used to occupy, hoping the final seconds before sleep came would find her close to me, if only in the tracker jacker-poisoned wasteland of my mind.

Blowing out a breath, I turn the next sentence over and over until at last it grudgingly forms on my lips.

"I keep . . . dreaming about her."

Dr. Aurelius nods, waiting in silence while I frown and shake my head.

"-but it's never _right._ I'm back on the train. Katniss is screaming." I pause and lick my lips. "But then it always switches to something else before I can remember what really happened."

"Switches to what?"

Impatient to keep going, I start to answer and stop, scrubbing a hand through my hair. "Just . . . does it matter?"

"Perhaps, yes." He sets the clipboard aside and leans forward. "Sometimes when we don't or _can't_ deal with an issue consciously, it finds a way to come out instead through whatever subconscious pathway is available-in this case, while you're asleep."

He leaves it at that, but it's not hard to see where he's going with it. I grunt.

"So you're saying this is all my fault?"

"No," he says gently. "_None of it_ is your fault. But you asked me the other day how to help your memories return faster and right now you're purposefully avoiding every one of the topics we need to eventually discuss in order for you to start really improving."

I cross my arms, about to tell him to go fuck himself, but something else comes out instead.

"Such as?"

He raises an eyebrow and waits, probably debating whether or not I really mean it.

"Well?" I demand. "If we're supposed to discuss everything on this list of yours, shouldn't I at least be able to _hear_ it?"

Dr. Aurelius clears his throat. "Your time in District Thirteen. The bombing of Twelve and subsequent loss of your family. The impact of your hijacking episodes on reestablishing meaningful relationships with others, including but not limited to the episode that resulted in the death of the soldier from 13." He pauses, eyes not leaving mine. "And the six weeks you were tortured here in the Capitol."

I turn to stare out the window, gut suddenly feeling about like my leg did when the mutts ripped a chunk out of it in the first arena.

_Because of course I got to keep that one. _

"That's some list," I mutter under my breath, still not meeting his eye. "I talk about all _that_ and you _still_ won't tell me where Katniss is?"

As usual, he ignores the question. "Peeta, you don't have to talk about anything you don't want to. Or even talk at all. But _you_ are also the only person who can decide at what point you're ready to take the steps to start getting better."

He pauses, voice gentler. "When you're ready, I would suggest picking one topic to focus on, whichever you feel most comfortable starting with, though I appreciate none of them are particularly easy-"

"Has it been fifteen minutes yet?" I interrupt, turning to glance at the wall panel.

Dr. Aurelius gives me a patient smile, one which I don't return. A little voice in my head announces I'm being rude, but the other part of me just doesn't care. He straightens and picks up the clipboard.

"In your dreams where you're on the train, is Katniss asleep like in your drawings, or awake?"

"She's . . . well, neither, I guess." I frown. "She's screaming."

"Why haven't you drawn that?"

"She . . . no." Frustrated, I shake my head. "She's-I can't get to her. I can hear her screaming."

He continues to write. "So you never _actually_ reach Katniss at all."

I think about it. "No. Not since-"

He finishes writing and looks up expectantly. I fiddle with my bandage.

"Not since she shot Coin. Before, it was more like the sketch."

Nodding, he writes that down too and gestures to the drawing pad left out on my nightstand. "Have you done any more work on it?"

The change in wording from last time is subtle, but there. Asking _about_ it. Not requesting to see it directly unless I offer first. After a few seconds of stiff silence, I lean over and grab it, flip the pages until Katniss Everdeen once again rests on the end of the bed between us.

"What comes up for you, looking at this?"

Exhaling, I shake my head. "I already told you I can't remember."

"I mean now."

My eyes flick to the page. Her hair trails a dark, uneven path past her cheek, brow slightly furrowed as if she's struggling to escape the monsters that haunt us both even with me there. I swallow, chest growing tight.

Dr. Aurelius leans forward when my breathing picks up. "It's okay, Peeta."

I frown at his attempt to get in my head, not wanting to feel anything but anger towards Katniss after everything she did to me. Not looking at him or the sketch, I tug at a loose thread on the cuff of my pants until my breathing evens out.

"She used me," I finally mutter. "She knew I wanted to protect her. Knew I . . . _cared_ for her and that she didn't feel the same way. She would have nightmares and I would hear her scream, go to her and hold her until she fell back asleep. And then after the first few nights we just started going to bed that way."

Writing it all down, Dr. Aurelius slowly nods. "And did anything else happen while you were in her room?"

Face reddening, I shrug. "As far as I remember, no."

He's silent for a minute. "Peeta, even knowing all that, why do you think you still went to Katniss night after night?"

The room grows very still and for a second I debate not answering, fairly certain he won't push the matter if I refuse.

But the truth is there. Waiting on the tip of my tongue. A kernel of raw, indignant hurt, small and deadly potent as a single nightlock berry. All but begging to be spit back out and freed.

"Because that's what she and I do."

I say it quietly and with no small trace of bitterness, breath hitching as I feel the echo of her fingers ghosting over my forehead, chest so tight I can feel my heart pound at the remembered pain of seeing her leave the cafeteria in Thirteen with Gale.

_Protect each other._

Swallowing, I stare down at the back of my hand.

"And that day in the cafeteria?" His voice is soft.

It's a long time before I answer. "I was mad at her."

He nods. "Yes. And what else?"

I shrug and trace over the imprint of her teeth, unwilling to say aloud what I suspect both of us are already thinking.

You can't lose what was never really yours to begin with.

.

.

I stiffen the moment she rounds the corner of her tent, head down and fingers clutched nervously around the worn strap of her pack. Seated on the camp stool across from me, Gale does the same.

The four hour watch has been filled by more long silences than words, Gale and Mitchell whittling on scraps of wood close to the heater while I frown and try to piece together what bits of information the former has offered about Twelve. The dry goods shop where people from my part of town bought soap. The sharp scent of pine and decaying earth that filled the air after a heavy rain, for the space of an hour or two, washing the stink of coal dust away. The square in the center of town where the bakery once stood, every detail fuzzy and indistinct in my memory as it is sharply etched in his.

He doesn't bring her up and neither do I.

Katniss slows as she approaches us and stares off into the distance, chewing on her bottom lip. I frown, but it's Jackson who speaks.

"Hawthorne, Boggs wants to see you."

It's subtle, but impossible to miss. The moment of hesitation. The faint whitening of his knuckles. The brief sour twitch at the corner of his mouth. And then Gale rises without a word, nods once to Katniss as she trades places with him by the heater, and stalks off to find Boggs.

Leeg takes up position a few yards away, close enough to see us, but not in Mitchell's abandoned chair either. Twisting Finnick's rope around my fingers, I listen to the sound of Katniss breathing for a minute, finally risking a cautious glance up.

Her eyes are still trained on the ground, the toe of one boot scuffing at nonexistent flaws in the dirt as if she's desperate for _any_ excuse to put off having to look at me. So I just stare at her instead, take in the unremarkable color of her hair and small, flat mouth that never seems to hold a smile. Watch her poke her tongue out a little nervously to moisten her lips. Wonder if they feel as chapped as mine do.

_It'd be just like shooting another of the Capitol's mutts._

The huff escapes before I can stop it. She starts at the sound. Our eyes meet for all of half a second and then hers dart away again. Frowning, I watch her dig under one fingernail, the slight jerk in her chin almost faint enough to overlook had I not noticed it the previous night just before she dove back into her tent.

_Not bright orange. But soft. Like the sunset. At least, that's what you told me once._

And then like the last trailing tendril of warmth in a dying fire, a shadow flickers at the edge of my memory, twirling like a leaf caught in a curling, fanciful gust of wind before dancing away. Swallowing, I study Katniss as she chews her lip.

"You . . . wore an orange dress when we were in Seven."

Her hand begins to quiver and is quickly stilled. She peeks up cautiously at me through her eyelashes, hair hanging past both cheeks in dark, tangled curtains I have the sudden, confusing urge to tuck back.

Frowning, I clear my throat. "Real or n-?"

_"Real,"_ she croaks, immediately lowering her voice when Leeg moves one hand to the butt of her gun. Straightening, she plays with the tail of her shirt almost nervously for a few seconds, and then adds, "Cinna made it for me."

I nod.

A minute passes.

"We . . . danced?"

Katniss steals another look in my direction, cheeks darkening when she realizes she's been caught. Letting out a strangled sort of cough, she tugs at her shirttail again.

"That's right."

I don't say anything for so long my mouth goes fuzzy and dry, lost in trying to piece together jumbled images of her smiling and twirling in my arms. Elaborately arranged trays of food set out on lavish tables. Lights shining in my eyes as I descend stairs. The music ends and Katniss' gaze drifts up from my chin, tongue swiping across the bottom edge of her upper lip as she leans in to-

Instantly recoiling, I blink and shake my head. Katniss frowns.

"There were little chocolate tarts." Not looking at her, I clear my throat. "Set out on a tiered display. You said you wanted to try one, but I ended up finishing it for you."

She stares for a few seconds and then slowly nods, brow still quizzically furrowed.

"Real."

She flinches at every word as if they're tied to the trigger of a bomb. As if she secretly dreads what horrible truth I will remember about her next. We work our way painfully through parts of the first Games. Haymitch passing out in his own vomit. Her preference for lamb stew with dried plums. Rolls smeared with goat cheese and topped with slices of apple in the cave. And finally, back to Twelve.

"There was a cat."

This time there is no mistaking the scowl that immediately follows.

"Real," she answers grudgingly, muttering something I don't quite catch under her breath.

"What?" I say sharply.

"Nothing." Shaking her head in obvious annoyance, she chews her fingernail to stall for time, the effect disgusting given the filthy state of her hands. "He's _Prim's_ cat. Buttercup."

I wrinkle my nose at the name and for half a second it looks like Katniss is trying not to smile. Turning away, she quickly disguises it as a cough.

Another silence follows.

"He would yowl and wind himself around my ankles whenever I came over."

"Real." She scowls again and scuffs her toe in the dirt, pushing her hair behind one ear. "He thought the cheese buns were for _him._"

I frown again. "Cheese buns?"

As fast as it crept up, any hint of an emerging smile vanishes. I watch a mixture of shock and hurt twist its way across her features, unsure how I am supposed to feel in response.

_Elation. Satisfaction. Confusion. Frustration. Annoyance. Rage._

Katniss Everdeen, who despite everything I've been through will always view _herself_ as the person who's suffered the most as a result of my hijacking, an ingrained, _infuriating_ self-centeredness that cannot be blamed on any lie created by the Capitol. Lip curling in disgust, I look away, fighting to ignore the thin sliver of uncertainty snaking a path through my gut, a feeling that by now I've come to identify as practically synonymous with anything connected to _her_.

A sound from the right makes us both jerk up. Leeg shifts her open pack to one knee and bends to pick up the fallen canteen. After a moment, I turn back to Katniss.

"Like the ones we used to make at the bakery?"

She doesn't answer.

Anger rising, I raise my voice. _"Like the ones-"_

_"Yes."_ She hisses it, eyes slitted.

We glower at each other for a minute and then she turns away. It takes half a dozen knots in Finnick's rope before my breathing slows. Swallowing, I don't look up.

"I used to make them for you?" This time she barely jerks her head. "Why?"

I don't miss the hurt that passes through her eyes. It's a long time before she answers.

"My mother asked you over for dinner one night." Her voice is flat, all emotion carefully removed. "And after, you and Haymitch were playing chess by the fire."

She pauses while a gust of wind rattles tent flaps and sends leaves scuttling by.

"Haymitch was laughing at how many I had eaten." Rubbing the end of her nose, she stares off into the distance. "You brought them over every day after that."

I don't trust myself either to look at her or speak for close to twenty minutes.

Twining the rope carefully around my fingers, I lick my lips. "There was a book. We . . . sat together and worked on it while you ate them. You would watch me draw."

The change in her breathing is immediate. Straightening a bit stiffly, Katniss rubs her arms as if she's cold and nods, not quite meeting my eye.

"Real." Her voice is softer.

After a minute I add, "And I think one night I might've carried you upstairs. To your room."

She squirms and glances in Leeg's direction. "Real, but that was earlier. After I fell and hurt my foot."

"Oh." Letting that sink in, I wait a moment and peer over at her. "I see."

We listen to the hum of the heater for a little bit, the sun sinking ever lower in the late afternoon sky.

"How did you know I like to sleep with the windows open?"

She flushes and looks down again, picks at a hangnail until it starts to bleed and then chews it nervously. "You . . . you told me once."

I think back, trying to remember. "On the train?"

"Yes," she says guardedly.

Her shoulders hunch then and it's obvious she knows what I want to ask, what both of us know she doesn't want to answer. Not what had happened _on _the train, but _after._ How she could have clung to me night after night as a means of surviving her nightmares only to later abandon me all alone to deal with mine.

The question forms on my lips. Hovers there as I silently shout it, five, ten, fifteen times in my head to make sure I have it right, fully prepared to relish the seconds of humiliation she will undoubtedly feel. But as I catch sight of the sun setting in the evening sky just behind her ear, the words stick in my throat.

And for a moment, I forget to breathe. The pale blue of late day fades to shimmering buttercream yellow and then to the soft orange of freshly split pumpkin rinds. Clouds stretch in long bands of pink and violet across the evening sky, their wispy fingertips glowing ethereal with the reflection of the day's last dying rays of light. And for the first time since coming back from the Capitol, I am seized by the sudden, irrepressible urge to paint.

A long-forgotten tingle forms at the back of my neck. Katniss swallows and slides her eyes timidly in my direction, shrinking smaller every second where she perches with one knee pulled up against her chest.

_Still not particularly pretty._

But as I stare at her face bathed in the radiant glow of a sky I'd almost forgotten loving, I realize that no matter how much I want to, I cannot hate the girl who held on to _this_ for me.

And so instead, we sit together in silence and watch the sunset.

.

.

"This is a dumb idea."

Staring down at me with her arms patiently folded while I finish double-knotting my shoelaces, Decima doesn't indulge me in an answer, just stands there until I reluctantly push off the bench and retrieve my sketchbook and box of charcoals from the row of gleaming white lockers along the physical therapy room's outer wall.

Nodding once to the orderly at the desk, she swipes her badge and signs me out. Hadriana waits for us outside, unsmiling, hand tucked into her coat pocket where I don't have to try too hard to imagine she's spent the last few minutes fingering the dose of sedative I'll be on the receiving end of if I try anything.

This wing of the hospital is usually crowded, even more so than the burn unit three floors down where I still have to go at least once a week to get my skin grafts checked. It's one of the few places where nobody stares at me like I'm some sort of freak, a fake leg, no eyebrows and a body crisscrossed with scars still better than some of the other patients made out.

At least on the outside.

We reach the bank of elevators. Decima leans past me to press the call button while Hadriana stands some distance behind. I shift my weight and cautiously scan the hallway, checking for anything that might provide more information on Katniss' whereabouts, Dr. Aurelius having made no secret of his disappointment upon being forced to reschedule my physical therapy to an isolated setting with at least one member of his staff always present after I overheard a trainer say her name and lunged across the room and over a rack of weights to get to him.

I crane to try to see through a frosted glass window, catching what sounds like a television playing in the next room. Decima clears her throat, something in the little look she throws my way hinting she knows exactly what I'm doing. Annoyed, I step back.

"Going through the motions," I mutter under my breath. "He practically has a tie assigned for each day of the week."

After a moment, she smiles.

"That he does." She checks her watch and glances at Hadriana. "I suppose you'll just have to trust him."

I scoff. "If they wanted me to trust him, they shouldn't have assigned a head doctor from the Capitol."

Decima doesn't say anything but I watch the corner of her eyes harden just slightly behind the rim of her glasses. The elevator opens and the three of us step on. There's another young man on there already, dark hair, slight build, maybe a couple years older than me at most, and the button for our floor is already pressed.

Which is never a particularly good sign.

He's dressed in regular clothes and doesn't seem to require a team of armed escorts like I do, but he also doesn't smile and as if by mutual agreement, we retreat to our own corners.

No one says anything the rest of the ride up to the psychiatric floor with its stricter security protocols, and it isn't until we all stop at the nurse's station off the elevator that I catch the odd puckering in our silent fourth companion's lips when he swallows.

The recreation area is just down the hall from the nurse's station. It's filled with large, comfortable chairs and a couple of bookshelves that have been recessed into the wall. There's even some sort of large game table with a short net and round wooden paddles. A chess set left out in the far corner of the room immediately causes me to frown and think of Haymitch.

No television. Nothing sharp or heavy enough to be remotely dangerous.

I make a sound under my breath, not needing to look up to know there is surveillance equipment wired into the walls, just like everywhere else, that even in the event my _restrictions_ are further eased, I will still be monitored.

Decima sits a few yards away. Picking an armchair by the window, I carefully angle the sketchpad in my lap before flipping to the last marked page, propping it across my good leg to protect its subject from view.

She stands perhaps ten feet away, still holding her bow, arms lowered in the wings of her Mockingjay suit like those of a wounded bird that knows it will never again take flight, the emptiness in her face choking off air to my lungs no matter how many times I tell myself it isn't real. That somewhere Katniss is safe. _Alive._ It does nothing to erase the finality in her eyes as she leans forward to whisper something to her bow no one else was ever meant to hear, that moment the one I began to rush forward, the moment I _knew._

Frowning, I turn to Decima. "I wouldn't think the Capitol would allow Avoxes to be treated here."

She nods. "Until recently, they weren't."

"So do they, what, just write everything down in their sessions?" I tap one end of the pencil against the edge of the paper.

"Some might." She still doesn't quite look at me. "There's also a language of hand signs."

I finally pick up that she's annoyed with me.

Flipping to an open page, I settle back in the chair and start to draw, not saying anything for close to an hour. When I pause to stretch a sore spot in my back, Decima glances up at me from her book, tucks a wave of blue-streaked hair behind one ear, and turns the page. I stare out the window.

"There were two Avoxes with me in prison, Darius and Lavinia. I never saw either of them use it."

The next part I don't say aloud, not eager for the same reaction Johanna got in the cafeteria back in Thirteen for _not censoring her thoughts_, because besides Dr. Aurelius, most people here seem to freak out about things like that. So I don't tell Decima that they sometimes kept the lights out for days except for a single bulb out in the corridor for the guards. That I'd learned Lavinia's name by the filthy scratch of her finger in the dirt only days before I'd watched her killed.

"Only a fraction of them know it." I nod, waiting for Decima to continue. "Some just know bits and pieces. It can take years to become fluent and many might have been in positions that were too highly placed for anyone to get to them-risk exposure. The risk to the few who tried to help was high."

For a minute she's silent, perhaps weighing how much to tell me. Finally she tips her head to one side, voice soft and thoughtful.

"It's being brought out into the open now, since the old government fell . . . they would seek them out at night. There weren't very many of them, but they were able to smuggle in enough illegally-copied manuals to teach the first groups. And then there were others, some who brought food or medicine, doctors who tried to help those they could cope with what had been done to them. It was a very dangerous time."

I absorb this in silence, thinking of Lavinia and Darius, and last of all, of Pollux shaking beside me in the tunnels, unable to sleep. Pollux, who'd been mutilated and undoubtedly tortured for a crime none of us knew, but who had eventually moved past it, been the one to lead us back into the Capitol as Katniss tried to kill Snow.

Still trying to decide whether to ask Decima anything else, I turn at the sound of a door closing out in the hall. I can't see much of them through the narrow window cut in the door, only enough to identify the Avox from the elevator, his fingers moving so fast they appear as a blur. It's the voice that answers him that catches me off guard, one I'm by now far too familiar with, laced with a particular Capitol pretentiousness that never fails to make me want to roll my eyes.

Except now even _that_ makes me feel a little bad.

I go back to drawing and don't look up again until a quick rap at the door breaks the silence. Dr. Aurelius comes in with a clipboard tucked under one arm, smiling first at Decima before turning my way.

I snort. "You always knock in here too?"

But the words doesn't come out with their usual edge and maybe he notices because he cocks his head slightly to the side and peers at me quizzically for a few seconds.

"Peeta, are you ready for our session?"

I don't answer, but collect my sketchbook and follow him through the door. My room has been cleaned and searched while I was out, which happens at least once a week, only now I can't help but wonder who does it.

Dr. Aurelius pulls his usual chair around and I sit on the bed.

"How are you feeling today?"

I shrug. He asks the same thing at the start of every session, at least the ones where he doesn't walk in to find me strapped down and screaming at him.

After a minute passes he tries again. "You seem quieter than usual."

Swallowing, I rub one finger over the line of fresh pink scar tissue that's formed on the back of my hand, tracing the marks left by Katniss' teeth.

"You won't tell me where Katniss is."

But even that remark lacks its usual bite, and we both know it. Dr. Aurelius folds his hands in his lap, just waiting.

Uncomfortable, I look away. "Is Annie coming by again this week?"

He studies me for a minute and then clears his throat. "Her treatment is confidential, just like yours, but I'd be happy to pass along the message that you'd like to see her again."

Nodding, I stare at the glaring white walls of my room. _Annie_, who's crazier than me and has been for years, but who isn't a threat to anyone and therefore doesn't have to stay here.

"There was an Avox on the elevator," I finally say, absently thumbing loose pages in my sketchpad. "I saw him on the way back from physical therapy."

Dr. Aurelius nods. "Did seeing him trigger something for you?"

I shake my head. After a minute, I pull off my shoes and flop back on the bed. "Are there lots of them here?"

Dr. Aurelius considers the answer. "Some." Pausing, he picks up his pen. "What did you think when you first saw him?"

We're back to his favorite tone, the calm, and overly clinical one that never fails to grate on my nerves, particularly when he decides to start digging around in my head.

Annoyed, I blow out a breath. "Nothing."

He raises an eyebrow. "Nothing? You didn't think anything at all?"

Letting my head fall back on the pillow, I take a few breaths, trying to calm down, waiting until my voice is even to answer. "I didn't even realize he was an Avox. He seemed," waving one hand, I shrug, "perfectly normal."

Dr. Aurelius finishes writing.

"There's something I want you to consider, Peeta." Leaning forward, he laces his fingers behind one knee. "If you _hadn't_ realized he was an Avox, would the encounter still have bothered you?"

Getting pissed off all over again, I stare out the window while he continues talking to himself, wondering if he's like this in everyone else's sessions.

"It didn't-"

"The term _Avox_ literally translates to _'without a voice.'"_ He pauses for a moment. "It is no accident that Snow's regime chose a method of torture designed not only to brutalize, but to _silence_ its victims."

"What the fuck does this have to do with me?" I snap, the fact that I can't meet his eyes betraying that on some level, I already know where he's going with this.

He waits a minute.

"Peeta, do you remember what you told me yesterday, the part of the conversation between you and Katniss that came back?"

_How come I never know when you're having a nightmare?_

I still refuse to look at him, but it comes unbidden to my mind all the same. Two brief fragments of speech, the first of which made me cry hot, lonely tears while clutching a pillow tight to my chest, that she might have cared enough to bother asking about my nightmares offering a sliver of hope where before there had been none. But somehow I know it isn't what Katniss said that we were really talking about at all. It hadn't been from the start.

_I don't think I cry out or thrash around or anything. I just come to, paralyzed with terror._

Exhaling heavily, I lean forward and run both hands through my hair. "Why won't you tell me where Katniss is?"

He answers calmly. "We've been over this, Peeta."

"What, that she's in a safe and secure place?" I bark out a harsh laugh. "Fuck that and fuck you." Blinking when I realize snot and tears have started running down my face, I drag my arm under my eyes. "Tell me where she is."

Dr. Aurelius just stares back at me. Chest heaving, I look away.

"I feel like shit. Every day. All the time."

"I know, Peeta."

Jaw clenched so tightly it starts to hurt, I fold both arms across my chest. A minute turns to two. Finally I swallow, voice hoarse.

"He looked fucking normal."

Dr. Aurelius offers nothing in response. Grabbing a couple tissues from the box by my bed, I dry my face, and after a moment, slump back against the pillows. He picks up his clipboard and starts flipping through his notes.

My first attempt to say it comes out closer to a cough. Dr. Aurelius glances up to raise a quizzical eyebrow. I let out a breath and wipe my palms on my pants, slowly nodding.

"We can talk about Thirteen."

.

.

It might have been that all of it mattered.

Delly yelling in the cafeteria. Johanna's refusal to be silenced. Finnick's quiet devotion to Annie, woven like knots worked in a well-worn piece of rope into every steadying whisper and reassuring smile until it was unmistakable even in her darkest moments, sure as the clasp of their linked hands. What Dr. Aurelius later said. The longing quiver in Katniss' voice as she gave me back the sunset, and with it, the little part of myself that she kept safe.

Or maybe none of it at all.

Because when her screams pierce the night some three and a half months later back in Twelve, the first cool, fragrant breezes of spring swirling in through the curtains of my open bedroom window, it is no different from the day she huddled small, cold and starving in the rain under our apple tree. The day I burned the bread.

Heart pounding, I hurtle down the stairs with all the natural grace of a one-legged groosling. Turn at the bottom so fast my arm slams into the banister. Set off barefoot in a limping run across three wet lawns.

It's one memory that never does come back. Not completely. Katniss later fills me in on everything she can, long, painful conversations held in each other's arms that as often wound as help us both. But I never fully remember how it felt to hold her at night as we slept on the trains. Whether I resented the six months she all but ignored me. Whether I'd loved her too much to care.

Pajama pants askew and hair mussed, I trip climbing onto her porch, fumble with the front door and thunder up the stairs.

_"Peeta."_

What I am certain of, is that by the time I reach her side and try to gently shake her awake, I've finally come to understand what she meant that last day in the Capitol, what it was in her eyes as she stared down at her bow. _Peeta_, not Gale. His name what she screamed in the moment she was ready to die, mine the one that forms on her lips as she fights to escape the terror of her nightmares, desperately wanting to live.

"Katniss, wake up." Voice low, but urgent, I squeeze her shoulder again. "Kat-"

And with a start she jerks up, head knocking into the underside of my chin.

Groaning, I rub my jaw and curse under my breath, all of two seconds passing before Katniss, still shuddering, recovers her bearings enough to grab my hand and coax me onto the edge of the bed.

_"Peeta."_ Even in the faint moonlight filtering in through her open window, I see fresh tears fill her eyes.

Lifting a hand to her cheek, I use the pad of my thumb to trace them away.

"You're alive." The words come out coarse and scratchy as the dull gray blanket from my hospital bed in Thirteen.

Her teeth chatter, bottom lip still trembling, and as I watch her catch it between her teeth, we're once again facing off just as we did across the campsite outside the Capitol, something in the weight of her stare rooting me in place.

But this time there is no conflict. No hesitation. And no resistance. The moment I open my arms, she rushes into them, small, cold fingers digging into my back as she buries her face in my neck.

Curling one arm protectively around her shoulders, I draw the other hand slowly through her hair, solidifying the memory of its length, texture and scent. _Katniss Everdeen_, who smells faintly of smoke and wood from the fire we watched together after a quiet supper of stew and the cheese buns that I painstakingly relearned to make, of lavender shampoo and honeysuckle and peppermint tea. Of _home._

She shudders when my lips tentatively brush the crown of her head, a puff of breath ghosting hot against my neck, but it is as her arms tighten reflexively around my middle as if she worries I might be preparing to go that my chest swells with a rush of tingling warmth.

There would be many conversations in the coming weeks and months. Some go better than others. Several end with shouting and tears. Others we have many times before they can finally be put to rest. But on that night, it is enough just to hold her.

Drawing Katniss closer, I stroke her back until her breathing evens out, letting my arms relax once her head grows heavy against my shoulder. She sits up a little when I shift to adjust my leg, wiping her eyes and nervously grabbing my hand.

Neither of us move. I watch her chin quiver in the faint light, head tipped down so her hair trails in dark, silky curtains past both cheeks.

"Peeta?" Coughing, she quickly clears her throat. "I, um . . ."

I smooth her hair behind one ear, waiting. And then she reaches over to pull back the bedspread. Hesitating only briefly, I climb in beside her.

For a moment it's awkward. Hands have forgotten where to go. Her knee jerks when it first brushes mine under the covers. But after I lift my arm, she tentatively slides closer. And then her head settles into the space between my shoulder and neck, and it feels like she's always fit there.

Small, cold fingertips come to rest lightly against my chest, her hand hovering inches from her mouth as she first tests the words and then quickly rescinds them, almost a full minute passing before they emerge in a pleading whisper as pale and fragile as she still is, some days barely able to look at me across the table at breakfast, the girl who once brazenly shot an arrow at a roomful of arrogant Gamemakers salivating over a roast pig having purposefully starved herself one bite of eggs at a time until she was a sickly, thin shadow of herself.

"Stay with me."

My hand finds hers in the dark, the other still combing lightly through her hair until I feel her relax into my side. Katniss Everdeen, who I will guard until she finds her way back to herself, just as she once did for me.

Katniss Everdeen, who part of me has never forgotten that I loved.

And so I whisper a word, just one, into the fire-singed ends of her hair. "Always."

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Comments are like a perfect sunset on the Training Center roof with Peeta. Would love to hear what you thought :)


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